Agi & Sam, spring 2015 – text by Silvia Bombardini

Dear Shaded Viewers and Diane,

 

The golden years of eveningwear, is true, are getting sootier by the hour – and nowhere like in London, Savile Row nonetheless, is that these days more urgently clear. Like those corsets we wore once, that a third party was needed just to tighten, today's youth wouldn't know what to do with the other half of a three-piece suit. And if their very own party on Sunday night at Sanderson was anything to go by, Agi Mdumulla and Sam Cotton like to surround themselves with a great part indeed of today's youth. That is not to say, mind, that we're nowadays not anymore as vain as peacocks, but could there be a way into smart clothing that doesn't require you to log in to YouTube and find out how to properly fasten a bow tie? If there is, Agi & Sam would say, it's through Japan. And not just to pick up the classics – the aloof versatility of kimonos, the mastered craft of comfort, centuries' worth of pleats – but to absorb the textures of a culture, from the architecture of their roofs to the nearly invisible ripple on the surface of their legendary politeness and control. Restraint then, but only barely there, in the form of tiny, strategically placed poppers to fasten their coats, firm heat pressed wool or raised brushwork

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