“If the R13 girl had to go to a black tie party, what would she wear?”
That’s the question Chris Leba kept asking himself after the holiday season had him ruminating on elegance. The R13 girl has an elusive cool, an edgy, undeniably downtown spirit, so how would she approach formal dress?
The answer lay in a variety of visuals that remain on Leba’s mind, though the following two felt the most explicit: The first was Ralph Lauren’s—the man—habit of pairing a tuxedo jacket with jeans and cowboy boots for formal outings (Leba described his time at Ralph Lauren as his “roots”). The second was a performance of “My Way” by the Sex Pistols, for which Sid Vicious wore a white tuxedo jacket. “It’s a classic, and every time I see it I think of how you can take this aesthetic and give it a spin,” said Leba during a visit to his sun-drenched SoHo showroom. (Though he was referring to Vicious, he agreed that the same is true of Ralph Lauren.)
Leba always describes R13 as being rooted in the classics: A good shirt, a great pair of pants, a well cut jacket, all with a little twist (here is where the Ralph Lauren roots come in, he said). Crisp white button downs were styled with white fishnets on top (“to give it that texture”), and tuxedo pants were reimagined as cargos, their accent satin tape left hanging off d-rings rather than applied onto the side seams. Tailored jackets cut slim and close to the body were accented with satin drawstrings placed under the lapel, cleverly offering an alternative to the traditional tuxedo ruffle; these also found their way onto airy, loose button downs, with the drawstring inserted inside the front plackets.
Last season, Leba introduced a Margiela-esque flat two-piece sleeve, which he carried over into this lineup, this time cut in raw-edged leather or finished with satin binding. Another idea he expanded on for fall was his street print experiments, which see him and his team take photos of street art and place them onto garments either blown up, shrunken, or digitally altered—these were particularly compelling this season, and sat well with the overall punk-rock spirit of the lineup.
Leba is a textile obsessive, and this season his discoveries included boiled wool (which has proven popular this season so far); a luscious wool suiting—which, according to the mill, “is what James Bond would have his suits made out of,”—repurposed and overdyed jacket liners; and a delicious Japanese red velvet. The latter was used for a range of tailoring—a standout was a jacket, cut roomier than the rest of the lineup, which looked just like one Vicious wore in the final concert by the Sex Pistols from 1978.
“We take our irreverence very seriously here at R13,” Leba said. Irreverence is embedded into R13’s DNA, after all, and it’s a language Leba and his customer speak clearly.
What does the R13 girl wear to a black tie party? Well, whatever she wants.
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