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Comfort zone
Kirrily Johnston Momentum pants $280, Serendipity tank $160 and Entanglement shirt $280, Searching leather courier $620 and black leather wrap sandal $380, at 1033 High St, Armadale, Melbourne, (03) 8824 5495.
Ah, the irony. Just as women re-embrace the mother of all discomforts - elastic "shapewear" for godsakes - men's wear reflects its own sartorial "counter-zenith": a level of comfort to rival the oversized shirts and roomy Oxford trousers of the 1980s.
Bloke-comfort is as vital in summer 2010 weekend clobber for mid-aged city types, as it is in front-line ice-cool Gen-X designer men's wear and those guerilla brands so carefully pitched at Melbourne's picky inner-west-urban boy-tribes.
Comfort is its own personal political message, neat as a bumper sticker: "I'm so cool, I sacrifice nothing for my Cool."
Comfort is slippery and meltingly soft in Kirrily Johnston and Fernando Frisoni collections of cotton jersey Ts, shirts, long-line tanks and pants so loose and thin and droopy they lift and fly out romantically as the wearer walks, not that he gives a toss, then settle into pyjama-like elegance when he is still.
Comfort is cut boxy and wide on the legs of mid-thigh shorts by Rittenhouse and impossibly cool Melbourne brand P.A.M. It's also worn soft and wide and loose around the armpits on tricky-motif T-shirts and finished with - what else? - comfy, rubbery, nothing-to-see-here street plimsoles.
And, finally, comfort in prime-of-life man-brands such as Trent Nathan, Gaz Man, Country Road, Sportscraft and Voyager is much as it has always been, with every trend box ticked - cropped lean-fitting shirts, mid-thigh shorts, for example - but simplified and darkened for chic, and with just enough easing in the shoulder, pits, crotch and hip joints to dispel any doubt this ensemble was bunged on with comfort in mind.
The cool is incidental.
