YMC FW23 Looks to California's Pre-Hippie Movement in the Late '50s and Early '60s
With a color story inspired by the Golden State’s landscapes, the collection includes classic outerwear, bold tops, free-flowing trousers and more.
London-based fashion label YMC possesses an innate understanding of countercultural style tropes. For Fall/Winter 2023, the brand, which gets its name from the famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s mantra, “You Must Create,” articulates that sentiment through the lens of the pre-hippie movement of the late ’50s and early ’60s in California.
Galvanized by the Golden State’s mid-20th-century fashion archetypes, the collection names two heroes: William Pester, or the “Hermit of Palm Springs,” and Eden Ahbez, who wrote the song, “Nature Boy.” Alongside them, YMC’s moldboard included California’s landscapes, which largely fueled the collection’s natural color palette of red ochre, golden yellow, chocolate brown, black, navy, ivy green, kelp and ecru.
In terms of construction, the line enlists a wide-spanning roster of weather-conscious textiles, including recycled fleece, heavy natural Melton wool, vegetable-tanned leather, indigo-dyed wool, lightweight ripstop, ultra-fine poplin and woven cableknit. Collectively, the fabrications form a range of signature outerwear, double-take-worthy tops and free-flowing trousers that bolster YMC’s subversion of expectations.
Among the standouts, outerwear staples include the Erkin Eco Down Long Coat and the Lightweight Poncho, both of which appear nature-inspired with more straightforward silhouettes. Leaf prints, hippie-like embroidery and kaleidoscopic knits make direct references to the collection’s sartorial citations, while beach shirts, wool waistcoats, biker jackets and handkerchief tops encompass the rebellious attitudes of the era. Overall, the line nods to the formative, stylistic period with statement-making cuts, colors and combinations, all the while keeping modernity at the fore.
See YMC’s Fall/Winter 2023 collection in the gallery above.
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