Big, strong guys with big, strong beards swung axes, hauled felling saws, cast rods, and much more on the wilderness-shot posters for the Seattle-founded brand Filson that lined the walls of the Junya Watanabe garage showspace. “Something real,” read the script on the flimsy plastic invitations we were clutching: “Something that has history, that has a traditional shape. Our way of originality. A new feeling for basics.”
Or as Watanabe said backstage afterward through his translator: “It’s about sharing the classical, the good ol’ workwear of Filson: the Mackinaw Cruiser jacket…has existed for a long time.” Filson was founded in 1897 to serve prospectors rushing to the Klondike. In 1914 it patented its “cruising coat” (later re-identified as “cruiser”), which is essentially a field jacket with extra roomy shoulders and additional pockets. Over the years it became especially popular in “tin cloth” waxed fabric and mackinaw wool, a fabric that entered the canon after the British army commissioned greatcoats in red and black checked blankets during the War of 1812.
Watanabe presented us with many different variations of the Cruiser, of which Look 17’s was closest to the mackinaw prototype. We saw the shape in moleskine, tin cloth, plain wool, checked wool, emergency orange twill, scarlet cotton, black calf leather, black shearling, and much more. It was imprinted and blended within an orange parka and a patched wool topcoat. Its proportions were pulled and pushed here and there, and it was sometimes patch pocketed in burnished bits of brown leather.
It was interesting how the collection was built around these centerpieces. The models were, not quite without exception, as bounteously bearded as those guys in the Filson campaign. But instead of wearing full weekend-warrior boxfresh outdoor attire, they wore shirts and ties under their Cruisers. Watanabe-remixed Levi’s along with boat shoes from Heinrich Dinkelacker, hikers from Paraboot, and sneakers from New Balance made up the landscape. The overall impression was overwhelmingly Brooklyn lumbersexual, but one guy did wear a pair of socks within his Paraboots that were hemmed in the Italian tricolore.
Filson heads—of which I am one—will surely relish pouring through the many fresh interpretations of the Cruiser presented today, though I suspect the traditionalist splinter on its highly entertaining e-store reviews section will take a luddite exception to the fancier pieces. Over the sound system Avi Kaplan sang “Change on the Rise” and wondered: ““What good’s a man who’s lost his soul? Can’t take a stand when his flame’s gone cold.”
