Belstaff

autumn news

Sean Lehnhardt-Moore has been creative director at Belstaff for seven months, but today was the first time he put his head above the parapet. The former Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein man also worked for a while at low-key Brit brand Bamford, where he crossed paths with Helen Wright, the executive appointed by Belstaff’s newish owner Jim Ratcliffe to run this business under his watch. Wright promptly appointed Lehnhardt-Moore, who said today that he is a longtime fan of the brand. “I’ve always been a Belstaff guy; it is absolutely a blessing for me to be creative director here because it is a lifelong dream.” Although not a biker himself, Lehnhardt-Moore said his vintage collection has long featured plenty of Belstaff.

At this static collection, the garments were shown on mannequins grouped in four corners of the top-floor studio at Belstaff’s New Bond Street HQ. It was a crush—more about the schmooze than the clothes, a speed date with the new crew in charge—but the mostly leather outerwear selection certainly looked Belstaff-ian. Shearling bikers whose pocket styles were mirrored in men’s and women’s iterations, an enveloping shearling car coat, an indigo denim Trialmaster, a knit cape in checkered-flag double-faced wool, chunkily strapped biker boots, and a suede women’s flight jacket all looked good in the gloom. Lehnhardt-Moore described the gig thusly: “The feeling of taking something apart and putting it back again . . . deciding which pieces I want to keep and polish up, and which I wish to put aside.”

It would be great to see Belstaff’s clothes being worn in whatever presentation format Lehnhardt-Moore decides to polish up going forward. For now, as Belstaff tentatively revs its way into the latest installment of its many-chaptered story, it would be rash to rush to judgment: Let’s see where it goes.