September 4, 2008

"Mishima meets Mad Men" was John Bartlett's distillation of the spirit of his new collection, his first under the aegis of Liz Claiborne. And mad—if not entirely explicable—contrasts are the essence of the designer's ethos. (You could say his whole career has been a face-off between Forrest Gump and Fire Island.) Still, Bartlett's recent collections have felt like the stuffing's been knocked out of them, so it was uplifting to see what amounted to a return to the form he displayed more than a decade ago. In a tightly edited 20 looks, he offered one of his signature meditations on masculinity (Mishima? He was a different breed of Mad Man). Bartlett loves butch, which meant the short sleeves on his shirts clung to the models' bulging biceps. Torsos were defined by the seams of trim cabana shirts. The military influence that is key for Bartlett was sublimated in abstracted appliqués or stripes that suggested insignias on the sleeve of a polo.

But, as much as he has always loved a man in uniform, Bartlett will usually inject a jolt of provocative ambiguity. Here, it arrived in the form of a voile djellaba, or a loosely woven black knit hoodie that also had a North African feel to it. If Bartlett's boxily proportioned suits might have looked familiar to those Mad Men, their louche classmates—who headed off overseas to smoke kef and chase Moroccan boys around Tangiers—would surely have found comfort in the designer's leisurewear.

— Tim Blanks