Hong Kong company changes British fashion brand Gieves & Hawkes

By CECILY LIU (China Daily) Updated: 2015-01-19 14:09

Basmajian says in the years leading up to the acquisition, the brand lacked creative direction. It was doing things the same way it has been over the years, like "a beautiful jewel that just needed to be dusted off".

"I think Trinity realized that this is an amazing brand with so much opportunity globally, that we need a new team, a new creative direction, and we need to elevate the brand and evolve it," he says.

When Trinity found Basmajian, he was an art director at Brioni, an Italian fashion brand that also had undergone significant transformation over the six years Basmajian led its creative direction.

"I think they'd seen my work at Brioni and they liked what I had done with moving Brioni forward, and it worked. I liked them as a family, I liked the company, I thought it was a really good fit," he says.

The newest collection Basmajian has designed for Gieves & Hawkes, for spring and summer 2015, consists of a wide variety of clothing, including formal suits, ready to wear, weekend clothing, and sports outfits like cycling gear.

The collection is inspired by the British seaside, the company says, and is full of tonal colors found in nature: the sea, stones and plants, including blue, gray, navy, teal blue and brown.

"The British seaside has a very different mood than, say, the Mediterranean. So we were very much into this moody kind of rich tones, the navies, the teal blues, the saturated colors. I think that this was for me very masculine and very British," Basmajian says.

The collection has a big focus on outerwear and knitwear. Suits are shown in more relaxed fabrics like linen, cotton and wool blends, linen silk blends, and lightweight wool. They are often displayed with shirts and ties but also mixed with jersey and knitwear.

Basmajian says the creativity in color and texture challenges the tradition of suits being made for formal occasions only, because more relaxed suits can be worn for weekends, with a T-shirt and a pair of espadrilles or loafers.

The idea is to ask men to go into their wardrobes and mix things up, "to get men to think about using their clothes in different ways, and breaking down the rules of dress where a suit was for business, and a tuxedo for the evening, and the bathing suit for the beach," he says.

The collection has also been extended by adding bags, accessories and eyewear as well as shoes. "I feel that the collection really represents a kind of lifestyle," Basmajian says.