Sibling, spring 2016 – text by Silvia Bombardini

Dear Shaded Viewers and Diane,

 

As the curtain drops on London Collection: Men, critics will draw their list of which of the 32 shows, 33 presentations on schedule for SS16 we’ll be sure to remember when the season comes. And if they were at Victoria House on Saturday night and Sibling is not on it, you’ll know that they are probably lying. We called them Hearties, in Oxford: they were everything an aesthete was not. But it’s the American jock, the athletic bastard of J.D. Salinger, that was Joe Bates, Sid Bryan and Cozette McCreery’s summer muse. Forget the moody fitsters in nondescript lycra that flock after work to the gym downtown – for he’s the showy, swanky player of the fabled libertine years of college. Sweaty on pitch by day and dapper by night in a bespoke Mod suit made of wool tonic cloth by Savile Row’s tailor Edward Sexton in collaboration with Sibling, the tanned footballer is a sinful temptation in sororities all around. With puffed-up shoulders and self-esteem, glittery tanks and hoods trimmed with cheerleaders’ pompoms, he’s cocky, beefy, and forgivably dense. Truth to be told, the jock hasn’t been painted in the best of lights by popular culture through the years: he was Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides, or Kim’s boyfriend Jim in Edward Scissorhands. He often stars in dirty comedies or, bizarrely, horror B movies, and hardly ever as a sympathetic character. But perhaps enough time has gone by since Salinger’s 50s that a slight rehabilitation might be in order. Because, while there’s no doubt that the trio is poking fun at him – most notably with the low-rise bottoms that exposed the models’ bums and had the audience in giggles, while they walked confidently on as if unaware of it – there was no resentment in Sibling’s collection. Rather, as they reworked the jock’s training kit with knitted laces and his denim with a Sibling Swirl print, a sort perhaps of condoning tenderness.

 

Later,

Silvia

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