After a year off, Calvin Luo’s menswear collection is back. The gap Luo explained over the phone, was due to COVID; it was too difficult to manufacture both men’s and women’s in the depths of the pandemic. Now that life is going back to normal in Shanghai—and people are shopping again—Luo’s menswear operation is wading back into the seasonal waters.
It’s a slow process. The designer’s fall 2021 collection is a concise rethink of some of Luo’s fall 2021 womenswear pieces. Metal-clasped safari jackets carry over, cut a bit looser, as do softened, almost pastel colors, the result of sharing fabrics across the collections. But where his women’s line had a celebratory primness to it, with pleated skirts and knee boots, his menswear offers a louche, casual look. He explains it as a nod to the ’70s, citing both punk and disco as starting points, though the Dolls and the Trammps don’t come to mind at first pass. Instead, Luo’s look reads modern and streetwise: roomy on top and baggy on bottom, dressed up but not dressy. It’s a fresh idea for the designer; glance backwards at his last few menswear shows and you’d see models tricked out in graphic treatments and too-conceptual ideas. A little mid-pandemic pause seems to have gone a long way, giving Luo a strong first step back into the men’s market.