Oliver Spencer’s winter assortment is a lesson in good outerwear

The waning days of autumn – when the climate remains to be deceptively nice – make for the proper time to spend money on winter outerwear. The explanations are twofold: firstly, you can be well-prepared for the inevitable sudden drops in temperature, and second, you can be getting a headstart in your competitors (as any avid shopper is aware of, getting your fingers on one of the best outerwear, in your measurement, is a yearly contest).

London-based designer Oliver Spencer, whose work is a up to date riff on the classical British menswear canon, has positioned outerwear entrance and centre of his winter assortment, which attracts inspiration from Alpine costume codes circa the Nineteen Seventies. Titled ‘Postcards from Lech-Zürs’ – a nod to the Austrian ski resort referred to as the ‘cradle of Alpine snowboarding’ which loved a heyday within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies – the gathering is designed to encapsulate the designer’s tender, unstructured strategy to tailoring and has a temper of wealthy eclectism (typically, Spencer’s collections really feel like discovering the spoils of a very good classic retailer).

‘Postcards from Lech-Zürs’: Oliver Spencer’s alpine journey

Outerwear captures this louche temper: the ‘Massive Coat’ is a Nineteen Seventies-tinged double-breasted overcoat in hardy, midweight wool – whether or not beige houndstooth, flecked charcoal or a deep navy – and is satisfyingly outsized. Barely narrower is the single-breasted ‘Grandad Coat’, which loops neatly across the waist with an connected belt. Obtainable in a chocolate brown wide-wale cotton corduroy, navy wool, brown herringbone or a bolder colored examine, Spencer calls it the ‘consummate winter layer’.

Shorter kinds embody the ‘Arlington’ bomber, which is impressed without delay by classic flight jackets and Ivy League varsity uniforms. In the meantime, tailor-made jackets – like these in weighty twine or the workwear-inspired ‘Solms Jacket’ – are thick sufficient to double as an outer layer, notably when paired with this season’s knitwear. Spencer says he hopes the gathering conjures up particular person sartorial experimentation: ‘buttoned-up or left undone, [this collection] is an invite for every wearer to be their very own primary character. Sometimes off-piste, at all times on-point, at all times your means.’ The accompanying pictures have been shot on location on the snow-covered slopes of Lech-Zürs.

The gathering additionally marks steps ahead in sustainability, a founding precept of the label which has seen Spencer launch world-leading circularity schemes like ‘Repurpose’, which received a Wallpaper* Design Award in 2024. This season, a lot of the manufacturing has been native, not solely decreasing the model’s carbon footprint, however guaranteeing the way forward for the British textile business, which largely works utilizing time-honed methods. ‘Our business makes a large footprint,’ Spencer advised Wallpaper* earlier this yr. ‘We have to get so much higher at what we’re doing. We’re liable for the clothes we make.’