Every season, Engineered Garments founder Daiki Suzuki proudly touts the things that influence his co-ed clothing collections. There's no gatekeeping, no mystery, no Where's Waldo-style guesswork required to deduce the stuff that spoke to Suzuki each season: he's happy to share.
Suzuki's Fall/Winter 2024 Engineered Garments collection even pulls an Xhibit (is that reference too dated?), channeling the aspirational clothing brands of Suzuki's youth. That's inspiration by way of inspiration, y'know.
Specifically, Suzuki took EG FW24 back to the '80s with far-reaching reference points like the then-cutting-edge outerwear of C.P. Company; the big shoulders and bigger pleats of Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace; and even the misunderstood (at the time) deconstruction of COMME des GARÇONS and Yohji Yamamoto, which all left an indelible impression on a younger Suzuki.
There's also, as always, an ample helping of classic Engineered Garment touchstones — prepster uniforms, vintage militaria, cowboy duds — and a dash of post-punk art punk to taste, giving FW24 its distinct flavor.
"The trigger for me was the desire to re-examine the fashion style that had the most impact on me during the early 1980s when I was in my twenties," Suzuki said in a statement. "I’m exploring how projecting my present self onto my past self from that time might manifest in my current style."
What results is an Engineered Garments collection by any definition of the word, with a healthy spread of flight jackets, trench coats, windowpane suits, textural wool trousers, and huge-domed bucket hats.
One of Engineered Garments' best traits is its unrepentant consistency.
Folks who enjoy its professorial blazers and many-pocketed parkas can expect to find them year-round in a buffet of fabrics and colors.
The Loiter Jacket is always on tap, for instance, and its FW24 iterations include an eight-wale corduroy and homespun wool (and more). And the Workaday line will never not provide a reasonable variety of versatile workwear stylings, should mainline Engineered Garments prove too out-there.
But the seasonal remixes give Engineered Garment offerings a jolt of personality, infusing familiar faces with a fresh façade.
In line with the edgier, technical inclinations of Suzuki's '80s influences, EG FW24 occasionally interrupts safe fare with harness-strapped vests and jacquard-woven leopard patterns. You can see the inklings of boundary-busting clothes that blew his mind back in the day, the greed is good-era adventurousness informed by pioneering periodicals The Face and Buffalo Zine.
It ain't hard to imagine the members of Public Image, Ltd. or Killing Joke clad in EG's FW24 de/re-construcable Chelsea Jacket or patterned Sarouel Pants, my personal favorite EG trouser design.
That's the thing about EG. Suzuki may cite influence from forebears as disparate as C.P. Company and Yohji Yamamoto but his collections will never not look like EG collections.
Part of the appeal is that the vast selection allows customers to dip in 'n out, buying only the pieces that appeal to them personally unless they elect to dive into the complete look, which can even be achieved by mixing similar items from different seasons.
Another truism: regardless of seasonal inspiration, Engineered Garments' engineered garments are unfailingly user-friendly, just as wearable now as they were 10 years ago or even 40 years ago, when they were a glimmer in the eye of a young Daiki Suzuki.
