Phoebe English will present her first ever menswear collection during London Collections: Men next weekend. “It seems the right time to try something new, take a risk and see what comes of it,” Phoebe told us this morning, explaining that, “People have asked about it for a while now and I’ve always automatically said it wouldn’t happen but then suddenly it just seemed the right moment to try it out, it seems to have happened quite organically.” Made entirely in the UK from all natural fibres, English says the garments focus on “form, fabric and finishing,” presenting an accessible, relaxed collection of wide-leg trousers, “all engulfing” coats and jackets, easy shorts and soft layered muslin cotton T-shirts.
The spring/summer 16 collection will be presented at the Touba London showroom during London Collections: Men. The invitation shows heavy-cotton or perhaps light denim shirting with transparent buttons, and the lookbook will be styled by Another Man’s Ellie Grace Cumming. “I’ve tried to reach a middle ground between our mainline womenswear and our Core collection, something that can sit nicely between those two,” says English.
English recently completed the 2-year New Fashion Venture programme at the Centre for Fashion Enterprise, moving her studio from Hackney to New Cross and presenting a retrospective (or “introspective“) of her work at NOW Gallery in Greenwich. At the exhibition launch she told i-D that she had never really looked back at her archive before, preferring to focus on the future; launching menswear is surely evidence of the label’s steady growth and forward trajectory.