Trips to music festivals this spring helped inspire the latest JW Anderson collection, and what will surely be the most acclaimed show of the Milan menswear season.

A decidedly experimental collection in terms of cut, fabric, attitude, gender bending and humor from the Northern Irish designer. Who even included Ireland’s most famous brand, Guinness, in the show. With black sweatshirts featuring pints of stout, where the creamy head was made of pearls.
 
Post show, Anderson revealed he had been asking Guinness for years to use their logos and ads, as they were so much part of his youth.

“I’ve always been a mega, mega fan of all the advertising Guinness, even back to the 20s and 30s. It’s the iconography of my childhood,” explained Jonathan, who also played with the architecture of his youth.
 
A whole series of knit and cable wool tops featured houses, inspired by buildings in Britain and Ireland – a Georgian terrace house, a country cottage, or a two-up two-down. While other a series of puffers came in globular shapes, each sleeve a large droplet. Some finished with one-foot wide, three-foot long ties.
 
“I like the idea of primitiveness in clothing, which is what we do best. Hand knit story telling. And then creating a look where the depth of field is hard to comprehend, where proportion is out of kilter,” he revealed post show.
 
Anderson added that he was concerned his signature menswear had gone a little too casual and wanted to “to blow it all up again.” Attending festivals made him realize that fashion had become so conservative. “I saw more people dressing in high fashion than what actually was happening in fashion. That feels like a reverse. Many people want something that is really challenging,” he argued, albeit dressed himself in simple blue pants and a denim shirt.

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Many guests showed up wearing their invitation, a T-Shirt that read Real Sleep. Which JW explained by saying: “I was into the idea of therapy, and do we actually sleep at all today?”
 
Staged in a hyper rectangular south Milan converted factory, the collection by contrast contained over a score of cocoon jackets and coats, though all cut diagonally below the knee. Made in padded nylon, distressed leather, faded denim and featuring lots of high funnel necks, and scrunched up sleeves.
 
“We found that shape last season and I hadn’t had enough of it. It also does something to the body, which is really interesting It’s like armor and protective,” opined Anderson who will leave this collection in a showroom in Milan for buyers even as he departs for Paris to stage his next show for Loewe on Saturday, June 22.
 
A sense of protection that extended to the buccaneer’s pants, tied at the ankle, and his preferred footwear – chunky military boots, even if this was a spring summer collection.
 
“It’s a very JW Anderson show, like from a decade ago, when we wanted to explore fashion forward ideas. You either take it or leave it,” the underlined.