About the Boy
Sometimes, men do know what women want. Especially when it comes to menswear dressing for women.
For today’s generation, trust 30-something Scott Sternberg — 2008 CFDA awardee for Emerging Talent in Menswear, and designer of the elegantly edgy menswear label Band of Outsiders — to make our fantasies come true.
His sister line, Boy by Band of Outsiders, which was launched in 2007 has quickly become the go-to label for perfectly tailored shrunken schoolboy blazers with hand sewn details, slim-fitted oxford shirts with clever darting, and slouchy paper bag pants that have made filching off a man’s closet a thing of the past.
Quite a surprising feat for someone with no designing background whatsoever.
Straight out of university, the Ohio native moved to Los Angeles to become a hotshot Hollywood agent for Creative Artists Agency.
Five years later, he found himself restless in the film industry, and enamored with the creative aspect of fashion.
Today, the self-confessed clotheshorse and French cinema fanatic (he named his label after the 1964 movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard) churns out two lines of classically quirky preppy basics for men and women that gets retailers like Ron Herman, Barneys and Opening Ceremony placing orders in a snap.
For Spring/Summer 2009, the “Boy” by Band of Outsiders collection continues to reflect Sternberg’s ideals of designing “boys clothes for girls” as he likes to put it.
Inspired by Debbie Harry on Glenn O’Brien’s show TV Party, he tapped actress Kirsten Dunst to breath life into Boy’s traditional but fresh twist on tomboy dressing.
With a palette of classic neutrals like navy, black, white and khaki interspersed with bright yellow and red, standout pieces in the collection are the jackets of course.
A tropical wool double-breasted navy blazer paired with tapered khakis reminds us of classical French dressing with a rough edge; linen schoolboy blazers paired with shorts are so right on trend for spring, while a cotton hopsack blazer with black lapels is very Ivy League but with a dash of playfulness to it.
These covetable pieces don’t come cheap however. Shorts are priced at around $300, a nylon trench can set you back $1,250, while blazers go from $1,600 to $1,775. But this doesn’t stop fanatics from creating a cult following for Boy.
In this day and age where mass-production and throw-away fashion is the norm, there are women who are still willing to pay the price for high-quality fabrics, impeccable tailoring, meticulous attention to detail, and a jacket that will make you fall in love with it at each sight.
Now isn’t that what women truly want?
