Robert Geller’s Berlin Post-Punks Take New York Fashion Week: Men’s

Though designer Robert Geller has been lumped in with streetwear designers — “I was doing sweatpants for a long time,” he explained backstage before the show — lately, he’s made a concerted effort to break out of that box. His latest collection for Spring 2017, which showed at New York Fashion Week: Men’s on Tuesday afternoon, injected that street sensibility with something a bit more “elevated.” He pulled from his German roots for the collection, channeling the industrial Berlin music scene that emerged with the Neue Deutsche Welle — the German New Wave — in the late-’70s and early-’80s. This meant a graffiti-adorned glass set reminiscent of a derelict building, much like the post-punk youth might have squatted in during the period, jackets embellished with Polaroid photos, billowing bombers made of overdyed cupro, a technical fabric that mimics silk, and a merging of high (sharply tailored suiting) and low (workman-like matching shirts and pants). And, fitting with a show that called itself “Geniale Dilletanten” — Genius Dilettantes — as those Berlin post-punk youth named themselves, there was a bit of fun: leopard print and pom-poms, for good measure. Go behind the scenes of the show, here.