Michael Bastian 2009 Collection

Michael Bastian 2009 Collection
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“It’s getting kind of ridiculous,” Michael Bastian said, sitting in his small Greenwich Village apartment. “Every time you turn a corner, there’s a guy wearing skinny jeans, an ironic cap, a low V-neck tee, vintagey high-tops and a scarf. It’s the equivalent of the ‘Sex and the City’ look that was such a thing for women a few years ago.”

As can be seen from the gentlemanly elegance of his quarters, Mr. Bastian is old-school. In his world, men are still from Mars. Or at least Dartmouth. And it seems he has a point. How else to explain his dark-horse rise as a men’s wear designer? In the four years since he left his job as the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman Men to start his own label, Mr. Bastian has found surprising success with an agenda so modest it almost seems radical: to give men slimmed-down, spiffed-up versions of the all-American clothes they have long loved. Military shirts, khakis, wool tweed trousers, rugby shirts, ski sweaters, two-button suits, polos, Western shirts, swim trunks. A lot of designers toss around the phrase “classics with a twist,” but Mr. Bastian delivers: the right classics and the right twist.

His semiannual shows are not wildly produced fantasies of tomorrowland or yesteryear that send the fashion press into raptures. At his informal runway presentations, the clothes just look ... good. You don’t think: Yes, it really is all about the 19th-century samurai right now. You think: I want those pants.

“It actually makes him very important,” said John Jones, one of the owners of George Greene, a tony Chicago men’s wear boutique that sells Mr. Bastian alongside high-concept lines like Yohji Yamamoto, Thom Browne and Dior Homme. “I have conversations with people, about a show they saw in Paris or Milan or read about online, and they want to talk about it — and then it comes back to Michael. They’re curious about the others, but no one wants to wear the clothes. Michael’s things — they like the shows, sure — but more important, they like to wear them.”
Michael Bastian 2009 Collection