When Adam Kimmel was a kid, the Pacific Northwest meant Twin Peaks and River's Edge: dark, creepy mood pieces with enough wickedness to capture a rebel teen imagination. How reassuring that Kimmel's adult experience of the region should so perfectly match his fantasy. That's thanks to artist Dan Attoe, the man who inspired the designer's Fall 2011 collection. It was wild in them thar hills when Kimmel and his wife, Leelee, went to stay with the Attoes. In the celluloid aide-mémoire that the couple made to go with the show, Attoe rides his motorbike through snowcapped majesty and gets set upon by Bigfoot—the consummate Northwestern experience, in other words—and you can feel the designer falling under the spell of this "backwoods motorcycle punk," as he calls him.
Kimmel has done that before with his male muses, but this time there's something of a hairy paradox in play. If the impact of the whole shaggy-dog experience lingers in the designer's logo—now all fuzzed up, Sasquatch-style—his clothes have responded by becoming more sophisticated than ever before. Sure, there are hunting and motorcycle references (bike leathers abstracted in waterproof canvas not unlike what Dries did today). But if you studied the living diorama—i.e., real men in a fake forest setting—that Kimmel staged, what came across was a new level of technical accomplishment, especially with reversible items like the soft linen blazer that flipped to a nylon rain slicker, or the olive green peacoat that turned to quilted moleskin. For the first time, Kimmel has worked with his artist/conspirator on actual pieces. There's an eagle scarf, a forest knit, and—merciful heavens—a Sasquatch tee.
