When Anxiety of God designer Jerry Lorenzo went to Jay-Z’s annual Academy Awards afterparty very last thirty day period, he showed up in a surprisingly chill fit. On a night time where quite a few celebs, inspired by the golden age of Hollywood, or just the cutthroat age of social media, costume in over-the-prime interpretations of black tie, Lorenzo went a much less complicated route, carrying a substantial, lapelless jacket and a trouser slash with a cozy straight leg around a wool-silk T-shirt. This doubled as the unofficial debut of Anxiety of God’s most current collection, dubbed “Eternal,” unveiled previously this month, and a reflection of Lorenzo’s solution to dressing. He calls it “smooth jazz.”
“You want to enjoy in the history and not trouble individuals,” Lorenzo states. And, like a terrific sleek jazz monitor, your outfit should really reward a person who needs to spend nearer awareness. “If you hear that observe that not absolutely everyone else hears”—if you value the way a jacket is formed, its fabrication, the way it drapes—“then it is really a really great conversation,” he states. By way of rationalization, Lorenzo cites an unlikely resource of fashion inspiration: “I’m generally,” he states, “chasing this Kenny G reference.” Is that the initially time a designer on the chopping edge of great has copped to placing legendary saxman Kenny G on their proverbial inspiration board? Possibly, but that’s menswear in 2022 for you, in which a designer long unjustly lumped into the streetwear group, Kenny G, and a bunch of ultra-covetable fits are all component of the exact discussion.
Eternal, which comes immediately after two many years of growth, is Lorenzo’s proposition for anybody who also would like to chase Kenny G—or, possibly a lot more probable, who wishes to choose vogue assistance from a single of the most popular labels going. In previous collections, Lorenzo explored what American archetypes like denim and workwear would glance like when melded with Anxiety of God’s uncomplicated, athletic silhouette. These ended up stylish tips, in that Lorenzo was working with them to established trends. Everlasting, the designer tells me through Zoom from his stark concrete studio in L.A., represents a new route. “I believe that so a lot of what is actually produced currently has a timestamp of when it truly is launched,” he says, “and so I was truly chasing this transcendence of time with each piece.”
Bottling timelessness, it turns out, is substantially more durable than commencing a pattern. To do so, each individual piece has been stripped down to its essence, Lorenzo clarifies: Blazers are massive and squeaky clear. Overcoats and jackets feature elegantly droopy lapels, if they have lapels at all. Trousers, rendered in cashmere and dusty suede, are lower with voluminous legs. In the lookbook, the trousers pool all around the models’ slip-on sneakers and western boots, but they never glimpse messy—just effortless and relaxed, like your favorite pair of classic sweatpants. None of it seems built for Instagram—though, of study course, the o
utfits will appear damn superior there.