No.3 CONNOLLY “SASH” TROUSERS

TRULY SPECIAL TREWS

**NEW “BRIGHT BLUE JEANS”**

Look Hook No.3 -Connolly’s “Sash” trousers are back on Clifford Street this week, equating to big trouser news, particularly if you’re craving something on a properly different level. Am talking higher waistband levels particularly, along with this unusual take on fastenings. Isabel Ettedgui’s August story on her Connolly web site (click) kindly and eloquently indulgent of my connection with the Sash thing, the new true chambray style, and includes her first hand experience on 70s Glam-Rock style stuff. The Sash does feel like its from a different time, delivering an alternative silhouette (clicky), and while loathe to talk bout trends and Connolly in same sentence both waistband-height and detailing stories are officially areas of importance right now-The waistband is the new critical menswear zone. Its a new model is now in vivid blue stretch chambray with a tweak to the cut.

However I first witnessed Audibet’s ‘Sash’ trews a while back when he’d looked to early 1970s shots of trendy Malian students by photographer Malick Sidibe (click). Reference notes were clear, but I couldn’t help reading the pants as Ziggy Stardust in his tailoring by Freddie Burretti (click). Ziggy hardly wore tailoring, just toward the end circa 1973, but boy could he take it so far. I’ve never seen anything more sartorially exhilarating than cockatiel-mullet Ziggy in tiny, cropped tailored jackets and wonderful flared pants, some which swung bout his boots like culottes, while others became razor bell-bottoms. Audibets for Connolly are some of the only few instances I’ve seen this rare flex offered non-vintage.

The Sash are trousers ticking the androgynous box (can we still say androgynous box btw?) so unsurprisingly they always evoked an image of Bowie in Kyoto outside a low porch, brandishing a Strelitzia, wearing fantastical slacks. Other shots of Dave in Bowie feed into the raw denim suit version of Sash pants, charged and exciting- in workwear fabric tailored with angular attitude for walking. The new longer wider cut stride towards the ‘Sport’ character from Taxi Driver territory (click) played by Harvey Keitel. They solidly petition to be teamed with Cuban heels.

ANDROGYNY BOX TICK

**CAN WE STILL SAY ANDROGYNY BOX?**

Sash trousers waistband gathering and whale tail back sets them apart. There’s a discipline in effect with high fly and tape-truss-like pull-in action, and while it helps to be Bowie-stick thin, Audibet cuts and eases matters so Sash-pants can work on us mortals too. Especially now in new stretch fabric– feeling like a chambray denim in optimistic retro cool-colour:

“The boy in the bright blue jeans jumped up on the stage” blue, though note, not official Pantone pant tone classification (click).

Stubbs out.

ZIGGY FOR “PIN UPS” BY MICK ROCK IN FREDDIE BURRETTI SUIT