Designer Focus: Daniel w. Fletcher Menswear
Every so often one comes across a designer who both impresses and presents a collection that exudes a certain "something", and that something is talent! New on the London menswear scene Daniel w. Fletcher is a fledging menswear designer who is quickly garnering attention and rightly so. A recent graduate of Central St. Martins, this young designer has caught the eye of some rather important fashion people.
In Paris, Lucas Ossendrijver creative director of LANVIN guided him and more recently he has been taken into the fold at Louis Vuitton under creative director Kim Jones, where Fletcher is working for the men's leather accessories team and will continue to do so whilst developing his own label. It seems this designer pays attention as with his graduate collection SS16 he impressed the buyers at Opening Ceremony, who bought a capsule of his "Peckham" inspired collection.
For AW16 Fletcher has reminisced about school-days of a bygone time which evoked the teddy bear carrying Sebastian Flyte from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited with silk shirts that looked like pyjamas and cropped mohair knits. Bonded-leather bombers, oversized, colour-blocked polos and cotton-poplin city shirts all had a retro nod, but were very modern in execution.
My money is on the outerwear with a signature piping detail carried over from his graduate collection onto wool coats, bonded leather cropped jackets that also feature shearling pockets and collars and bring both a relaxed but luxe feel to what is his first proper collection. Challenging as it is to make an impression in a very crowded fashion landscape, I predict a bright future for Daniel w. Fletcher.
Images: Dham Srifuengfung
Styling: Michael Darlington
