Generally speaking, Brooks Brothers has the wind in its sails—not only is it widely revered as America’s oldest brand (founded in 1818), but it benefits from the recent Gen Z fascination with prep. Additionally, it has collaborated with brands like Junya Watanabe, Sacai, and Brain Dead, and, according to the brand, has had five consecutive years of growth. Since 2020, designer Michael Bastian has been at the helm as creative director, and this season the storied label presented its collection at an equally storied location, Rockefeller Center.
The spring collection adhered to the tried-and-true tenets of prep—just look at the cable-knit crewneck and pleated shorts in pristine white that opened the show. It was followed up by cricket sweaters, madras, rugby polos, candy-striped oxfords, Nantucket reds cut into mid-thigh-length shorts, oversized logos, and slightly daffy vacation prints like palm fronds and a scene of sailboats in a coastal bay for a breezily cut skirt. As the show progressed, the collection got slightly more eccentric—the colors a bit more vivid, the styling a bit more slapdash—but remained reverential in its approach.
Bastian, who once had a namesake label that toyed winkingly with prep and other classic menswear tropes and worked with another bastion of prep, Gant—could stand to loosen up his approach here and imbue the label with the street-savvy cool and touch of irony that has made other brands like J. Press, Rowing Blazers, and even Aimé Leon Dore so buzzy. Don’t let Watanabe and Sacai’s Chitose Abe have all the fun reinterpreting the brand. There’s so much to mine here, and in an age when the classic codes of the moneyed class have gone sideways, Brooks Brothers could easily add some authoritative wit and irreverence to that conversation.