by Bart Boehlert
by Bart Boehlert
Not many fashion designers can tell a complicated story about how the English and American troops held the hills against the Chinese at the end of the Korean War, much less be able to relate the story to their work. But Robert Massimo Freda can, and it is his intelligence and drive that makes one think that this new, young, menswear designer will actually succeed in the demanding world of fashion.
The 28-year-old already has a few good cards in his hand. He has won over some powerful allies, including Grace Mirabella, the founder of Mirabella magazine; Dawn Mello, the president of Bergdorf Goodman; and Jim Moore, the fashion director at GQ. This past season, Freda won the Council of Fashion Designers of America's prestigious Perry Ellis Award for best new menswear designer. His line is now carried at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Ultimo in Chicago, and Ron Ross in California. And, his grandfather designed clothes, so it's in his genes.
In Freda's austere showroom, white duck canvas covers one couch and shades the windows. In the center of the room, a big man named Bruno traces cardboard with a pencil and cuts it out to create patterns from which the clothes will be made. Behind a closed door toil the entire staff: a partner, Louise, and Britt, an intern.
Along the showroom wall, Freda has tied to aluminum poles bolts of fabrics which he is using for next year's spring/summer collection. There is linen burlap, a drapey linen crepe, a stone-washed linen gauze, Victorian weight linen shirtings, and more, all in earthy tones and textures, like windswept sand.
On rolling racks hang samples of this year's fall/winter collection; dense, soft fabrics in browns, camels and black crowd one another on the hangers. Pieces include Donegal tweed trousers, camel hair jackets, cashmere reefer coats, and a corduroy peasant coat. A sportier part of the collection includes motorcycle jackets, leather bomber jackets and ghurka shirts. Taken as a whole, the collection has a very hip Indiana Jones feel to it.
"My work is about 'American Cool,'" says Freda. "There are a lot of cool people walking around and there is no resource with that flavor to it. Ralph Lauren does the WASP, Calvin Klein is sex, sex, sex, and Donna Karan does the New York woman." Freda says Americans want to be something else -- English, Italian or French, but he is inspired by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Amelia Earhart, Teddy Roosevelt, Katharine Kepburn, and John Kennedy. "There is something distinctly American that I think is cool," he says. "There is a true grit element to America, a rugged individualism, the new frontier, a sense of achievement."
