"The day I see a leaf, is a marvel of a day"

Fiber & Fellow, as their name may suggest, approach fashion as being inherently based upon a certain relationship. As one may have guessed by one of my recent posts (click here), I have myself been pondering the different dynamics behind the forms of expression and semiotics that constitute fashion.

F&F design their clothing from the standpoint of the cloth being only half of what makes the look, with the other half in the relationship being that of the man wearing the cloth. Although this may sound to many as a rather trivial difference, one can not deny that designing from the standard of how clothing will look in use is vastly different from designing clothing on a mere static visual level.

The images above are from F&F's Fall '09 lookbook, modelled by Thom Gastelum and shot by photographer Alan Gastelum. The collection draws from the strong traditional aesthetic of the early twentieth century, reapplied to make it relevant to the modern man. The clean and simple looks, which can often be hard to design without looking overdone, manage to strike a well measured balance in their styling. What I was particularly interested in was the setting of the lookbook, which ostensibly puts both man and clothing in their natural environment of out in the elements.

In a passing moment I wondered to myself whether man's displacement from the natural world, makes this setting look foreign to our eyes, when compared to, say, a city setting for a lookbook. I suppose one is almost automatically drawn to making comments on the rugged simplicity and functionality of the clothing in regards to the harsh wilderness that surrounds it. Yet for me, there is a charm and a sense of comfortable belonging behind the shoot.

Although it may be daunting to many, man is often at peace when surrounded by nature, as opposed to the almost overpowering sense of utility and rigid order of the urban landscape. Are we so far removed from the original state of the fabrics and nature itself, that this seems in a way, unnatural to us?

Currently playing: Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 (performed by Lang Lang) - Chopin

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