How do you take your sportswear? Perhaps you shop every month and take your sportswear with a bit of sugar in the form of flourishes and details that are shiny and memorable. Or maybe you take your sportswear straight up with nothing added ensuring that its shell life and its working into your existing wardrobe will overlook trend and hype. Then there are questions as to where you've gotten it. Did it come from the collective spigot of the local fast-fashion deli or from the fine French press of the more seasoned expertly designed trattoria? Well there's good defenses for both one's choice of sportswear brew, however I've found that knowing what to procure from those that offer the highbrow and lowbrow can make all the difference in a delightfully roasted cup of menswear java.
Great lines that fit well, foresee & often overlook trend and offer colors that can transcend from season to season are always ones to watch. Menswear has always been a slow-moving animal, but even though it has found an exuberant momentum in the past ten years, certain sticklers like quality in fabrication and building a way of dress as opposed to subscribing to seasonally trending themes still reign supreme. Enter BILLY. When I first previewed Billy a couple months ago I was immediately drawn to the attractively somber color palette and nicely weighted textiles. From the vintage washed & hand-distressed jerseys to the über-soft hands of tees and leathers, Billy, founded in Los Angeles in 2017 by Holly Jovenall, offers the kind of approach to basics that take you from need to want. You need base layers like hoodies, tees and reliable jackets but after espying the subtle nuances of hue that suggest color but don't overpower you with it, that want turns to need. Jovenall went from designing vintage wears for private clients in 2015 to creating Billy to cater to the future which has seen a significantly lesser reliance on tailoring and interfacing and more of a desire for comfortable knits and pre-washing.
It's about how you approach what you do and what you want to wear doing what you do. This is all while taking into consideration that good design is sensual and not just visual. That is the appeal that should rest on basic clothing whose wearability of design creates highbrow menswear that goes from necessary to covetable. That is BILLY.
www.BILLYLosAngeles.com
