The pictures finally came in. A rather long wait since the runway show took place at the 72-13 Resuscitation exhibition last month…

There’s so much to look forward to from Woods & Woods though. Its A/W09 collection is an antidote to banal design; Woods & Woods heightens national design pride with its traditional tailoring techniques updated with male/female interplays in its A/W collection. Featuring mostly menswear, the collection is a robust autumnal palette of heather greys, roasted browns, , true blacks and white washes, accented by surprises of jade bottle green and canary yellow.

The tailored jacket and the shirt-full-of-hidden-details is a constant feature in the Woods & Woods’ signature, and designer Jonathan Seow has made his key A/W statement in these. New jacket silhouettes moved from tapered oblongs to boxy to cropped.  And none were left to fend on their own as the look intended is only a look when paired and layered with a shirt peeping from behind a collarless jacket and paired with exposed, reflective zips and inner seams on rolled-up trousers - recalling those worn by courier cyclists (though the press release says the collection is inspired by Russian Constructivism).

The pieces that craned a few necks in the audience were a jacket with a shawl lapel that crossed over each other, and a canary yellow cropped jacket with a white funnel collar - adorable on the boy-model with the pout and jawline. “Morning…”

Shirts were given the block treatment with contrasting fabrications that went from  cotton to wet-look coated silk, or made merry with clever pocket details. There was particular interest in a sheer viole collarless shirt worn under a coated-silk gilet that fastened with a zip and traditional button loops, traditionally used on the pockets inside jackets.

This is a preview of the collection and not available in-store yet. Watch this space in the coming weeks though. We are optimistic about its arrival.