Timo Weiland: For the urban and the urbane

5^th April 2012

Ryan Brown

Ryan Brown

5 April 2012

Parading down the streets of New York, Timo Weiland’s eponymous label is suited to the urban and the urbane. Using sharp tailoring, the collections reflect the angular skyline of the metropolitan, synchronising the wearer with the architectural aesthetic of the city in order to sanction their habitation. Avoiding a discord of styles, Timo Weiland envisions a harmonised city in which a uniformed style is achieved by the resolute observance of tailoring and tidiness: neatening the sprawling disarray of New York through a sartorial streamlining of clothes. Yet this motivation is neither affiliated, nor restricted to New York but could be transferred to London, where it would resiliently instil homogeny to the city’s organic cacophony of clothing.

Timo Weiland and his design partner, Alan Eckstein, form a duo who have balanced the juxtaposition between delicate and sharp superbly, using softer fabrics such as silk to counterbalance the weight of their knitted coats. The elegant sheen of the silk offers a dignified composure; undoubtedly inspired by the city, it mirrors the landscape of its overwhelming modernity and abundant use of reflective material in order to promulgate the label’s admiration of grace and minimalism. Refreshing, however, is their use of colour, a daring element for such a controlled, simplistic design aesthetic. Yet unsurprisingly, their palette is as uncompromising as their cut so that the inclusion of few colours, particularly blue, does not throw into disarray the almost rigid oppression enforcing their designs.

The label’s menswear branch has succeeded in using utilitarian fabrics to mask the fashion of the pieces. This facade, allowing the slightest flair of intricate styling, renders Timo Weiland an acceptable label for the refined, whose predilection for a sophisticated garb disparages the frivolity often employed by menswear designers. Most beguiling, however, is the ease with which an overworked, city chap can don this label: throw on the skinny chinos, block knit and trench and proceed with the defiant nonchalance of a man who comprehends fashion.

Throughout the progression of their label, Timo Weiland has maintained an idiosyncratic obsession with neat regularity. With the advancing seasons, so too does the label advance in its clear aspiration; their tailoring cuts swathes sharper along the paths that it struts, the grace of its dresses continues to unnerve the unkempt unapologetically. Avoiding monotony while maintaining regularity, this label’s mantra beautifies the city streets, for which we should be thankful.

Ryan Brown
Photos: Courtesy of Timo Weiland