subscribe to style file blog via RSSrough luxury not an oxymoron, says andre benjamin
September 5, 2008 2:55 pm
“Thank God for Ashton Kutcher,” André Benjamin said at last night’s launch of his new menswear collection, Benjamin Bixby, at Barneys. Oddly enough, he meant it. A while back, the Punk’d host tried to nail Benjamin with one of his famous taped pranks; thinking he was in trouble, the former OutKast rapper identified himself using a fake name. The first one that came to mind was “Bixby.” It’s an appropriately old-school tag for a line inspired by sporting fellows of the twenties and thirties: woven trousers, tight-fitting wool football sweaters—plus fours, even. (”I wear them, I really do. Just out in the street, on a normal day,” Benjamin said, before being whisked off to glad-hand admirers like Mary Alice Stephenson and Padma Lakshmi.) Charlize Theron, who recently shot Battle in Seattle (directed by her boyfriend, Stuart Townsend) with Benjamin, dropped by. “We’ve been hearing about it for a while,” she said of her co-star’s sartorial enterprise. “He was telling us about the bizarre world of fabric shopping.” Bixby is about “rough luxury,” Benjamin explained, and an era when gentlemen athletes could care less about grass stains or being dubbed metrosexual. Veronica Webb had her own way of summing the look up. “It’s, like, dapper farm boy. Private school kid and tobacco farmer.”
tags: Andre Benjamin, Bixby
