"I give you my love more precious than money." Walt Whitman's words, intoned at the opening of Michael Bastian's presentation, were a reminder that here we've got one designer who operates outside the box. Never mind the box; he gave us his love woven heart-shaped into the palm of a fingerless cashmere mitt. Bastian is a puzzle. He designs sportswear that is in the classic all-American vein, but he weights it with a strange, deeply personal yearning. For love? Well, that kind of makes sense, given this season's road trip: classic Kerouac infused with the ambiguities of the movie My Own Private Idaho.And if it isn't love, it's nostalgia that fuels Bastian's vision. He was talking about the hold that early nineties grunge had over him. It was all over the clothes: layer upon layer of stuff that you could imagine a creative indigent extracting from his local Salvation Army—a denim vest topping a plissé-front shirt, a pinstripe suit over a sweater with a cheesy raccoon motif. There were literally hundreds of elements that composed the overall mood of the presentation (which made it a much more accurate mirror of Bastian's collection than last season's skimpy show). But let the designer speak for himself: "Exit 26: Olive plaid Chesterfield top coat; Olympic blue fleece full-zip sweater with thumb holes; navy/white tattersall check button-down shirt; Olympic blue wide-wale corduroy pants; natural raccoon scarf; super narrow leather d-ring belt; gray corduroy trucker cap with wing patch." In the face of such a comprehensive reconstruction of a private vision, judgment is practically powerless. "Guys have to connect emotionally to buy stuff," Bastian said after the show. And if that suggested that he believed he was making such a connection, his instincts were right on the nose.
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