Taking a look back at Saturday we find C.P. Company’s first showing under the guardianship of former Galliano menswear designer Wallace Faulds. It was, as anticipated, an exercise in sleek simplicity for a label tailored towards the man on the go. With its design aesthetic that emerged almost thirty-five years ago from a consideration of uniform and working clothes, and an interest in the tension that exists between elegance and function, one can never expect the type of adventure that Vivienne Westwood provides to grace a C.P. Company collection. Nonetheless, for a design house that prides itself on focusing on volume and fabric, and that has a ‘jealously protected’ research colour lab, their spring offering was not so much simple (the way in which Raf Simons’ intriguingly minimalist collection for Jil Sander was ‘simple’) as simplistic. The collection for the modern working man saw an array of straightforward silhouettes comprised of outerwear and relatively loose-fitting tops (note, however, the diversity in necklines/collars) offset by tapered trousers that signaled C.P. Company’s love affair with the rolled cuff. While there were fabrics aplenty – cotton, nylon, denim, linen, and even suede in the shoes – they missed being used in thought-provoking ways; the patterned camp shirts, too, were a misstep. The assorted use of over-sized pockets which appeared on cardigans, T-shirts, sweaters and hooded outerwear served as a point of interest, but the starring role was won by the colour palette: a bevy of blues bounded by beige and buff. We saw light sky blue pants, Persian indigo shorts, duke blue windbreakers and azure cardigans supported by a beige trench and buff outerwear. Still, though, for all this seeming freshness, it became clear that an interest in workwear and uniforms has inspired a label whose latest collection is just that–uniform.
