When our good friend Mr Mort moved out West a while back to work on Dockers, we couldn’t imagine how the brand’s style profile could evolve from the official wardrobe of Casual Fridays to something cool. We spotted some fresh styles out in some cool stores in Copenhagen a few weeks ago, and now,  witness the evolution—Steve Alan x Dockers launches next month. Eric Wilson has the scoop:  IF ever there was a designer who was well suited to answer the current men’s wear call for the perfect pair of khaki pants, it would be Steven Alan. A decade ago, Mr. Alan expanded his retail and fashion-showroom businesses with a collection of signature men’s shirts that created an ideal ratio of fitted-ness to slouchy-ness, without any room for sloppiness. Now he has been tapped to develop a collection of khakis and sportswear for Dockers, which will arrive at Barneys New York and Steven Alan Annex stores in October. Dockers, you may recall, is not a fashion-forward brand. It is better known as a go-to resource for Casual Fridays, which makes the collaboration with Mr. Alan unusually intriguing, much the same as when Michael Bastian got his hands on Gant. (NYT)

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NY finally got their Monocle shop earlier this week in the West Village. The store features a constantly evolving collection of fashion and lifestyle products as well as the new design collaborations from Oliver Spencer, the Tomorrowland x Monocle travel suit series, and the Ettinger card case. Covering just 188 sq ft, the store, located in a red brick landmark building, features Monocle magazine’s distinctive black-and-white design format, created by Monocle’s team of designers in London. The shop also has wooden floors, a slatted oak screen built by local artist and carpenter Kenon Perry, Vitsoe shelving, and a fully retractable glass store front.

535 Hudson Street (at Charles Street), NYC

In 1965, a Japanese magazine publisher sent photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida to Ivy League schools in the United States where he took a series of candid campus photographs that were later assembled into Take Ivy, a now-iconic ethnography that will be released in English for the first time by PowerHouse Books this week.  One of the most sought-after research and inspiration books, especially in the prep and Americana movements in contemporary menswear, Take Ivy has influenced designers including Ralph Lauren, Michael Bastian, and J. Crew’s Frank Muytjens. Racked caught up with Ed Heald, a 1968 Dartmouth grad whose photograph appears twice in the book—on pages 54 and 70—to get the scoop from the other side of Hayashida’s camera. Heald, a freshman at the time the photo was taken, came to Dartmouth from Hudson, Ohio. His father, grandfather, and uncle all graduated from Dartmouth. Read the interview after the jump.  (Racked)

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Over the course of the last few seasons, London-based designer Makin Jan Ma has used his eponymous label as a means to establish fully-realized personas for characters in an ongoing art project encompassing film, music and painting.  Central St. Martin’s grad Jan Ma describes himself as a filmmaker first, evident in the elaborate backstories he creates for his two main characters Guts and J. Sky, whose wardrobes and homes are brought to life in the segmented lookbooks for each collection.  J. Sky for example, as depicted here by model Felix B, made a fortune off of a Polish porn site and tends to forget birthdays.  The garments that make up the SS11 collection are similarly idiosyncratic, an androgynous mix of sheer fabrics, silk shirts, moon and camo prints and simple shorts.  Makin Jan Ma will be on hand this season at (capsule) Women’s New York, and will also debut a picture novel based on J. Sky and a collaboration with guitarist/model Raoul Colvile to set Guts’ journey to music.  See more from the SS11 collection below.  (Steve Dool)

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Shoreditch’s recently opened men’s boutique Hostem is a stand-out stop for shoppers combing the streets of East London’s ever-burgeoning neighborhood. Proprietor James Brown sought to marry his favorite, though often disparate, sartorial aesthetics under one roof, yielding a selection of offerings that are both austere and artisanal.

From the tightly edited cadre of brands (Ann Demeulemeester, Casely-Hayford, Adam Kimmel) to Hostem’s JAMESPLUMB-conceived interiors, the store’s concept of elegant, intelligent design unifies the space and its contents. “So many cultures have influenced me from living in Umbria to Los Angeles,” Brown explains. “It was important my various experiences were reflected in Hostem.” It’s fitting, then, that the décor—Swedish linen curtains, hand-painted hessian wall panels and front desk-cum-former church pew—contributes a balancing sense of calm and quiet. That the shop takes its name from the Latin “audio hostem,” or “I hear the enemy,” further suggests Brown’s potential antagonists are anything too gaudy or trendy. (JCReport)  More after the jump.

41-43 REDCHURCH STREET – LONDON – E2 7DJ

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Union labor will be used at New York Fashion Week for the next three years under a deal between the company that produces the biannual event and the union that oversees much of the stagehand and other theatrical labor at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts….The union had been engaged in a dispute with the producer over whether IMG should be required to hire union labor for all Fashion Week events held at Lincoln Center. While the contract between the union and the performing-arts complex gives the union jurisdiction over many events on the Lincoln Center campus, it does not require the use of union labor for events that take place on the plaza or surrounding areas, such as Damrosch Park, where Fashion Week tents started going up last weekend. (WSJ)

Designer Sonia Boessert describes the German collection boessert/schorn as “rough, inaccurate and nonchalant”—just like life itself. The brand, which was launched in 2006 by the two designers Sonia Boessert and Brigitte Schorn has been shown in Paris, Berlin and Tokyo since 2006, and is known for its use of materials with unusual surfaces and structures especially knitwear in all its variations.  The collection features special handcrafted methods, knit techniques and dyeing, basically inspired by craft and traditional costumes as well as the art forms of Bauhaus and DaDa.  Boessert, who just bought a new kitten, tells us a bit about SS2011 after the jump.

View the full collection at (capsule)  Women’s, Sept 21-22 in NYC

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Interesting read on HuffPo: Looking around, it appears that there is a youth frenzy in every creative industry. From music to art to fashion, people are going crazy for everything indie. Retailers like Urban Outfitters are taking their cues from young designers, and the young populations of urban cities are looking to be outfitted by fresh and exciting brands. Yet, beyond the simple intuition of its presence, it is hard to determine the actual market size that exists to support emerging designers. After speaking to analysts, venture capitalists, and consultants about this demand, it quickly became evident that actual data and sales figures were nearly impossible to find.The luxury industry is notoriously hazy in presenting earnings. Even large public companies like LVMH show earnings in such a way that only exposes the revenue generated by the company as a whole rather than by its individual brands.

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J.Crew opened their 4th men’s store in NY earlier this week. VMan reports: The two-storied, 3,400-square-foot space houses designer Frank Muytjens’s tightly edited collection of outerwear, shirting, denim, and of course men’s grooming finishes. Using reclaimed wood from old barns, the interior feels (and sort of smells) as if you’re inside an Algonquin Park cabin – but there’s a catch: Mid way through the lower level, you eventually come face-to-face with “The Vault”. As intimidating as the word seems, “The Vault” (an ancient heavy metal bank vault) contains Men’s Shop carryalls, vintage collectables and a selection of shoes (to go perfectly with your tailored suiting needs). With walls full of neatly folded flannels and antique apothecary knickknacks, something tells us we’re going to be spending a lot more time uptown… More pics after the jump.

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