By celebrity osmosis his clothes have worked their way into the wardrobes of Mark Ruffalo, Jake Gyllenhaal, Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt. " The factories were up in arms trying to tailor a garment with stretch but when we perfected the suit it came to define Prada menswear." Perhaps the most forward-thinking strategy of the Neil Barrett studio today has nothing to do with technology at all. I then have the aged-wool blazer of the same weight but with all the borders shrunk or aged. These two different garments are coming from factories that are side by side in Tuscany Even in his early days, innovation was key.
"What I proposed with Prada was a menswear label to complement the women's - modern and elegant, with the most exquisite finishing." One of Barrett's major pieces was the classically tailored navy suit - but executed in stretch polyester. I always have the perfect navy wool mohair blazer in the collection. Neil Barrett is 50 per cent perfect and 50 per cent aged and destroyed Instinct told me to do this. Men don't want to look as if they've just walked off a runway We work with 26 of the best factories in Italy It's a wonderful country for researching original finishes There are a million variations you can achieve Take the navy blazer. You should look at a Neil Barrett show and either want to be that man, or want him. Barrett is a leader of the deconstruction movement in menswear - surely the most influential trend of the decade - because his garments fuse classical tailoring with directional technology. "The number-one Neil Barrett style is treating fabrics as if they've been lived in Prada was all about perfection.
It's one extreme or the other on the runway and not a lot to do with how real guys want to dress. It's a balance between interest given to a garment without making it farcical. I try to make men look masculine and credible, while most designers throw out either asexual, fey boys or exaggerated super-macho men. Up close in Barrett's studio, his work reveals dense permutations of fabric treatments and finishes "You have to look at a garment from a 360-degree angle. I always work on the body" - this is not a designer who sketches in his boudoir then hands the drawing to a minion to have made up. "And it is too easy to colour something up crazily to give it interest, " he adds, referring to his love for navy, white, black and grey " Anybody can do that.