The Anti-Calvin Is Here

By Belinda Luscombe

The American male is a difficult species to dress. He hates to shop. He considers it daringly fashion-forward to wear a deep blue shirt instead of a pale blue one. On casual Fridays, he may go nuts and slip on a pair of khakis. To most of his ilk, showing that you care about what you wear is European or effeminate, or both.

If anyone can change that, it's John Bartlett. The first American designer trained specifically in menswear who has attracted a significant following since Ralph Lauren, he's at the start of what critics and retailers are predicting will be a big, bold career. His sexy-but-cerebral aesthetic is catching on with customers outside his traditionally gay following. Already the plucky designs by this graduate of Harvard and the Fashion Institute of Technology have caught the eye of Italian manufacturing giant Genny Holdings SpA, which snapped up the 34-year-old Bartlett for a licensing deal last year after he had been in business on his own for just six years. Now Genny has named Bartlett as the creative director for its Byblos label, unseating more experienced but less flamboyant designer Richard Tyler. This season Bartlett's designs will be carried in huge department stores like Saks and Neiman Marcus under the John Bartlett label, as well as in snooty, exclusive shops like Henri Bendel under Byblos.

His Italian sugar parents have also enabled Bartlett, who is based in New York City, to branch out into womenswear, which he started just last year but which already, he says, does four or five times the business of his men's line. This is partly because as a bona fide all-American, good-looking, young and talented man in the fashion industry, Bartlett attracts hype the way linen attracts wrinkles. And hype sells clothes. But it's also partly because the man has an eye. He hasn't attracted big bucks yet. Revenues this year will be somewhere around the $4 million mark, or 2.5% of Ralph Lauren's 1997 advertising budget. But for a little guy, he packs a lot of influence.

If you doubt it, the proof is in the Hush Puppies. The sudden grooviness of this geek staple has been widely attributed to Bartlett. "I was looking for a very American, institutional, '50s, My Three Sons shoe for the fall '95 show," says Bartlett. "We called [Hush Puppies] and asked for some old styles they were not really doing anymore." Bartlett had the shoes custom-dyed in hues to match his suits. Hush Puppies, which claims it was already orchestrating a comeback, got a huge boost from his ideas. Bartlett's newest foray into shoes is a little less traditional. On the catwalk in last month's fall menswear show in Manhattan, models wore leather flip-flops with turned-up toes.

They won't be Bartlett's first tough sell. "Sometimes, the difficult stuff sells first," says Colby McWilliams, men's fashion director at Neiman Marcus. "His sailor pant had a difficult fit, but it was the first thing that sold for us." McWilliams says Bartlett's customers are mostly young, urban, trim, confident and, yes, gay. While Bartlett, who is openly gay, moved away from the body-clutching clothes of prior seasons with his recent show, these are still not duds for the chubby. And while Bartlett is also openly from Cincinnati, Ohio, you can't buy his clothes there. He may borrow looks from the suburbs, but he's all about the big city.

Like big cities, Bartlett has an appealingly awkward mix of influences. His clothes still have the homoerotic scent that marked his earlier collections, but the aroma is now more a celebration of the male form. Woven into this body-love is a hint of bookish geekiness, as if G.I. Joe had been given Gomer Pyle's soul. Or as Bartlett describes it: "Think the U.P.S. man meets Paul Bowles, Hello Sailor meets Hello Kitty, the Army Corps meets Lilly Pulitzer."

What this means in actual threads is lots of variations on cargo and sailor pants; safari-esque tops that Bartlett calls "ranger" shirts; jackets and trousers made of sailcloth, waxed cotton or suede; and colors that range from "cement" and "sand" to "citrus." Bartlett offers his customers a chance to dress dangerously but not ludicrously (well, except maybe for the hot pink cashmere stretch jacket paired with hot pink leather pants).

While Bartlett says he would rather have a smaller, more focused business like Helmut Lang or Paul Smith than develop a huge multiplex of style like the label of Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein, he still has expansion plans. Having his clothes produced in Italy rather than in the U.S. means better tailoring and fabrics, but has raised prices. Eventually he plans to introduce a cheaper line for the malls. By then, maybe Bartlett's nerdy sexuality will be a look the masses can pull off.