Nicholas K

For this season's collection, Nicholas L Kunz went heavy on the military influence, seizing on all the creative possibilities inherent in the standard-issue army parka. Underneath the outerwear, the clothes had a general slouch, which helped give the collection its nomadic feel. That was winning in the simpler pieces, such as loose shorts in sand-washed chenille, tapered khakis and long knit cardigans, but it sometimes got heavy-handed. The collection really found its level in looks that mixed the rustic and the urbane. The shirting was generally strong, made out of woven cotton stripes and checks developed in-house and cut in a variety of pleasingly off ways. Maintaining the worn and distressed feel of well-used army attire, leather vests and jackets had a grit that was simultaneously streetwise and outdoorsy. There was also a nice textural quality to the layered ensembles, which -along with the palette of rubble colors cut with rust and end-of-the-horizon mauve- was suggestive of the rich yet hard-bitten landscapes of the Southwest. Indeed, Nicholas K kept the signature earthly dark tones of the theme with lots of olive green, gray and black, but he infused them with other colors such as blue and purple. Everything had a very weathered, organic, airy feel that was soft to the touch, looked lived in, and hopefully exuded the feeling that you never wanted to take it off.