Dunhill Spring/ Summer 2023: Lightweight, luxury levity

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jun 13, 2022

Deep diving into the archive, but always using contemporary fabrics, designer Mark Weston on Friday presented his clearest fashion statement for the house of Dunhill to date.

 
His starting reference, a billowing umbrella coat culled from the archives, but reinvented as a slate-gray layered raincoat, the epitome of understated elegance.
 
Seen in a spring summer 2023 collection shot on the roof of the Woolwich Arsenal, a military structure which is a mix of 19th-century brown brick and huge contemporary glass windows.

“It’s a great space to shoot, a blend of the original with modern luster. I wanted that idea of  old meeting new just like in the collection,” explained Weston in a Zoom from Dunhill’s UK headquarters.
 
“The idea was taking special fabrics to make the collection feel lighter than ever. Challenging myself and the team on what we can do,” added Weston, standing before a moodboard including a 1998 Peter Lindbergh shoot from Uomo Vogue, seen back when Mark was working in New York.

 
“What I loved about that shoot was everything all shot in profile,” he smiled, the better to highlight super-light fabrics.
 
Like the blend of water-resistant wool and silk used in the new Umbrella coat or in several crisp and classy midnight-blue suits. While a first-rate blazer is composed in second skin leather finished with a super fine membrane to stop ripping.  Totally clean inside, it’s side are perforated, keeping the torso cool. And another super light leather layered car coat is perforated at the back, on the shoulders and behind the  sleeves.
 
Weston confesses to having a “love-hate relationship with seersucker,” but his solution to the conflict is ingenious.  Creating a natty white parka in military seersucker on a ripstock grid of nylon. The same material seen in great utilitarian trousers paired with a black-on-black denim blazer.

 
Made in mix of slate, mid gray, ochre and Yale blue, the collection manages to combine drama with fluidity. It will start selling in store and online in early December.
 
Paired with a new range of collapsible leather goods, like pebble leather totes and belt bags finished with a 1893 harness that showcase Dunhill’s origins as a supplier to carriages. New racing semi-wrap auto-racing glasses again riff on the brand’s early days supplying the fledgling auto industry.
 
Seen also in an old turn-of-the-century ad on Weston’s moodboard for Dunhill Motorities, and a gentleman sitting inside an open-top car.
 
“It caught the sense of protection I wanted, but super elevated for today in the finest of cloths,” concluded Weston.