Patrick Michael Hughes Senior Fashion Editor Men's Fashion Writer
Spring 2023: The college campus look of varsity style is an enduring American fashion. The current spring season, features modern light silhouettes highlighting chalk tones to fresh vibrant shades in wide verity of fluid items. It's a new chapter for this timeless sensibility. The collegiate style is thriving in American and European fashion brands for Spring 2023.
Varsity style's American roots stem from the playing fields of the English public school and country house attire at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. The fashion finds its true American iteration just after WWII. The 'man on campus' look was a reference to the GI's return to civilian life and continued education on the American college campus. In the advent of the Korean War during the nineteen fifties college campus populations boomed with preppy mid-century fashion and an expanded vocabulary of what is known as 'East Coast' Ivy Style.
New Haven, Connecticut is a waterside town the home of Yale University. It was also where GANT founded in 1949 by Ukrainian immigrant Bernard Gantmacher. His prior manufacturing success was as the purveyor of men's shirts to companies such as Brooks Brothers and J. Press in New York City. Later the GANT shirt's distinctive back of the collar button, box pleat and locker loop were the fashion statement of Ivy League style. By the nineteen sixties GANT was creating shirts for the Yale-co-op store on campus.
Currently, GANT is a retail company operated and headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and identifying as a Swedish company with American Roots. The brand operates in several markets and its products are globally available in countless stores and GANT stores all over the world. Thirteen years ago, in 2010 the company returned to New Haven as a heritage brick mortar presence.
For Spring 2023 Christopher Bastin the Global Artistic Director returned to the brand’s nautical legacy. Maritime prints, colors of the sun are an optimistic statement for the start of spring leading into the summer season. The return of interest in traditional clothing since the global pandemic is an elevation style sense of getting dressed again. Preppy's varsity style is an integral part of American sportswear as of late it has seen rough days and stagnant sales with the rise of streetwear taking center stage. What is happening is, the interest in heritage and preppy fashion in the market with a nod to streetwear. Navy blazers, boldly striped, Breton inspired knits paired with oversize pieces, rugby shirts layered with denim, sweeping trench coats with athletic pieces and monochromatic styles in pale shades to dark blue. Denim fills out the multi-tiered brand's offerings for spring.
Bastin states “Since our roots are on the east coast of the United States, on the shores of the Atlantic, we wanted to present a vision of our legacy. The collection is inspired by pieces of archives, with maritime references and the primary colors that embody the sails of two ships,”
Robe di Kappa, is an Italian sportswear brand founded in Turin in 1968 by Maurizio Vitale in Northern Italy. The brand is specifically designed for those people who, both during their leisure time and in professional activities want informal clothing, prefer modern, high-quality style and cost-effective clothing.
The Spring 2023 season highlighted a 'proposal line' under the label ROBE GIOVANI inspired by the relaxed elegance which characterizes an essential element of the preppy varsity style with a nostalgia for heritage sports based looks.
Elements of collection recall the look of the main characters in the 1955 psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr. Ripley. In this collection there is a generous lean into resort styling, a well traveled preppy tone and proclivity for the Rivera.
The arrival of the American style in Italy has connections to the WWII GI's khaki uniform and mid -century movie stars. Both of these had a tremendous influence on crafting the post war 'Made in Italy' movement and the establishment of Italian look. ROBE GIOVANI's modernity is the genderless items in a primary color pallet. Spring 2023 uses the template traditional East Coast campus clothes such as cable knit sweaters and vests, flat front wide leg cotton trousers, Bermuda shorts to drawstring gym and vibrant colored joggers to evoke heritage of sport far form any playing field. The collection also mixes the preppy varsity aesthetic with utility styled items featured in monochromatic navy and brown looks. One of the standout looks are the modern takes on traditional varsity jackets which have an athletic flair.
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