Neil Barrett Pre-Fall 2018......Fashionweekly....On Fow24news.com

Neil Barrett comes from a family of British military tailors; precise cuts, sharp silhouettes, and exacting details are practically in his DNA. Even his pristine Milan showroom space is an ode to orthogonal aplomb, all black and white walls intersecting with rhythmical angularity.....
Not many bells and whistles chez Barrett, not even when it comes to his approach to the feminine side of fashion which is, as he calls it, “straightforward.”

“I always start from menswear’s staples and then apply them to feminine shapes,” he explained, presenting his Pre-Fall 2018 collection, which arrives in stores this month. “Every season I try to take one element, one subject from my military vocabulary, doing variations of it within the collection; it could be a greatcoat or a military cape, one masculine pattern reworked in different fabrics in a feminine way.”

This season, Barrett put the cape under the magnifying glass. He started by taking the front half of a masculine jacket, which he stretched and folded back to form a sleeve in a single line. Voilà! A half-jacket, half-cape was born. “We cut the jacket up, added the fabric on, then extended it. So, quite simple.” Even if to this reviewer the process sounded quite Houdini-esque, the results were impeccably neat; the ingenious cape-sleeved element gave tuxedos, short column dresses, and shearling jackets a certain fluidity, adding a sense of movement and lightness to their rigorous construction.

Elsewhere in the collection, little black dresses in compact black jacquard wool were cut close to the body and emblazoned with a white five-pointed star—a military cross redesigned to become a decorative motif, printed also on crisp oversize shirts, techno-knitted polos, and T-shirts. Ultra-miniskirts with folded pleats and slim-fitted, high-waisted, slit-on-the-back pants highlighted a feminine, quite sexy feel, without detracting from the designer’s signature meticulous, sharp tailoring.