In the depths of blog archives, a wonderful image has sprouted of Ute Ploier. The Austrian designer is one of few menswear designers today (being also female in most particular) that is challenging the perceptions of what the contemporary young man is wearing. For her, fashion doesn’t directly correlate with menswear so easily. Her nature as a designer stems from a critical understanding of what menswear can be or how it perhaps may be interpreted. She looks into historical references, architecture and literature to produce a menswear collection which is contemporary and new with unconventional detailing and strong tailoring in methods of manufacture as for example, her beautiful white poplin collar button shirting. This year, we have seen a number of coveted menswear designers doing marvelously well and their outcomes in their respective collections such as Raf Simons is has progressive and futurist. But overall, a collection of clothes that interacts a social mainframe of ideas plus a highly prêt-à-porter range speaks immediately from the heart. If Raf Simons has won recognition for this year’s best designed collection, he would deserve and rightly so but as a personal winner, Ute Ploier is already there. And best of all, a vote for her is a vote for Raf as he was her mentor during her studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

If you have not seen Ute Ploier’s current new collection, please view it on Cultures In Between for exclusive press images and story here.

Ute Ploier

Tags: Spring/Summer 2009, Ute Ploier

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Mode. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.