Commission’s Dylan Cao and Jin Kay took a break last season in order to align themselves with the menswear calendar. This kind of reset brought them back to a familiar question they’ve been investigating for a number of years now—What is Americanness, specifically within the context of being an immigrant? They were “looking at first generations that came here before us in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, and how they tried to assimilate, whether by dressing up using elements of American preppiness or wearing a nine-to-five suit 24/7 to show that they’re ‘excellent’,” Cao explained in their midtown studio.
Many of the classic signifiers of American sportswear are present in the collection, just distorted through the designers’ singular lens. Polo shirts and zip-up hoodies are cut at an angle so they pull and drape to one side when worn—it is a subtle effect that reads not as “deconstructed” or “reworked” but as a regular piece of clothing that the wearer simply needs to “straighten out,” except of course, there is no “straightening” to be done. A t-shirt designed to be worn inside out and backwards had a label that read EXCELLENT CLASSICS / IMPORTED VISION.
In the past the Commission silhouette has been oversized, but this season everything is coming back close to the body—so close in fact that their button-down shirts and shirt dresses are scrunched up, with the buttons seemingly pulling from opposite sides as if they are too small and need to be forced to fit together. Elsewhere, a tailored jacket has been “turned” into a skirt, with the jacket’s shoulder padding—sans sleeves—left exposed, becoming a kind of peplum in the process. Knits with their signature slits at the chest have been replaced with a cutout at the back, which is more discrete but also allows for the pieces to be worn in a different way, like they’ve been laid flat on top of the body; as if the wearer is trying Americanness on for size, not entirely sure it fits.