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January 29, 2006

"Everyone's been doing rock 'n' roll [but] we shouldn't forget the cowboy," Paul Smith said after his show, citing Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood as icons of cowpoke masculinity. Smith, though, is English to the roots of his spectacular mane of hair, so the collection we had just witnessed was more Savile Row-deo than Home on the Range.

That said, the Wild West and the West End shared a sleeping bag with surprising ease. The slightly Edwardian edge of cowboy tailoring sits well with English pinstripes and plaids. A shirt with Western detailing juiced up a suit in dark-gray flannel, and a pinstripe lining loaned some urban gravitas to a floor-sweeping duster.

The big city-big country combination yielded the occasional oddity (one tailored jacket featured a tapestry depiction of what looked like The Last Roundup). More often, though, the Western elements—a cowboy's belt buckle worn with striped pants, or the Indian beading on cotton shirts—showed how a regular guy can add some vital idiosyncrasy to his wardrobe.

— Tim Blanks