Amiri Men’s Fall 2024
Mike Amiri has the red carpet on his mind. Not as a showcase for his designs, mind: it was the inspiration for his fall collection.
“Looking at arrivals at theaters in Los Angeles [is] literally where I grew up,” the Angeleno designer said before the show. “You’d stand out there and see how people would dress and how the young stars would really dress. And they would kind of put it together their own way.”
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In his opinion, that cusp of adulthood — picture a young Leonardo Di Caprio midway between adolescent heartthrob to “an owner of his own craft,” said Amiri — felt congruent with today’s menswear scene.
“People are putting their own twist and making formal informal in a little way,” he continued.
To translate that journey of feeling out and firming up one’s identity, he reached again for the intersection between the post-war optimism of the ‘50s with ‘90s volumes and slouch.
Out of the pink velvet-draped backdrop came dinner jackets paired with slouching trousers, retro-looking leather blousons toughening up a grandpa cardigan, suits made informal by an open shirt and singlet, a suit adorned with a print that looked like the sparkly sequins being photographed.
It was also the premiere of the Amiri monogram, writ large on coats or minutely forming a jacquard pattern.
Youthful nonchalance was cemented by proportions that didn’t hug the body too closely and paired with pants cropped on the bust, long and lean on the leg.
Loungewear and Old Hollywood glamour added shawl collars, tuxedo scarves and fluid textures.
That elegance felt artfully thrifted, particularly when zhuzhed up with brooches and other found trinkets. Elsewhere, knits looked perfectly shrunken while double-washed silks were roughed up but keeping “enough like sheen and structure to look expensive,” he added.
Fake it ‘til you make it then?
“The thing for me is ‘how do you make that dream?’ How do you make that ‘something’ that has desirability?” mused Amiri. His handsome and relatable fall collection made those questions sound rhetorical.
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Launch Gallery: Amiri Men's Fall 2024
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