New York Fashion Week: Men's - the sartorial gentleman and the military man

New York - The penultimate day of New York Fashion Week: Men's was marked on Wednesday, February 3, and designers proved that there were two things that are dominating this whole week: the classic gentleman and military style clothing.

The day began with Perry Ellis, who reminded us that their days of being considered and old man's brand are long gone. Of course, the brand kept it classic with suiting pieces, chunky turtlenecks, and signature cardigans, but the looks were all very contemporary. 2014 marked the brand's first return to the runway, and since then, designer Michael Maccari has proven that his contemporary take for the label has caused buyers to covet Perry Ellis for their stores again. Since 2013, they've begun retail expansion, and it's no doubt that their more fashion forward designs have helped.

Up next were the gentleman of Cadet, Raul Arevalo and Bradley Schmidt. While Perry Ellis gave us the classic gentleman with a contemporary take, this duo gave us military inspired garments that were very utilitarian such as a workwear influenced trousers, old school military inspired jackets, and jumpsuits that appeared to take their inspiration from welders, but were still very high fashion. Last year, Cadet was named a finalist of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, so they have a reputation to live up to now, and they did that reputation justice with their utilitarian chic designs.

Perry Ellis, Nick Graham, Greg Lauren, and Cadet put their design talents on display for day three of New York Fashion Week: Men's

Nick Graham showed us that the classic gentleman has found his tastes for color and flair with his offerings for fall/winter 2016. The designer who described his collection in three words as "adventurous, manly, and outdoorsy" really played up the outdoors theme for this collection. His all start cast of models included major names such as Sebastian Sauve, Chad White, Eric Rutherford, and Clark Bockelman just to name a few. Each of the models wore ostentatious head pieces such as hats with antlers or acorns to play up the outdoors theme, and were labeled with the names of the national parks that inspired the looks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite.

The collection itself was a vivid array of patterns and colors like blue, burgundy, red and green. Plaid was also big for the designer, and he's one of the few designers that can do plaid without having his garments look like advertisements for lumberjacks. His ability to play with colors in men's suiting offers a light of hope in the world of the sartorial gentleman who want sophisticated clothing, but aren't fans of traditional black tie.

The eternal prince of the utilitarian look for the week was Greg Lauren as usual. While the designer is still going a little too far with the deconstructed elements (the holes in the shirts and the slouchy look are a bit too much,) he still does an excellent job with shoes, waistcoats, and layered detailing. However, as the designer has slowly begun to find his talents outside of the deconstructed utilitarian tastes and has begun incorporating more classic elements into his design, his collections have continuously improved.

With two motifs continuously dominating the men's wear collections this season in New York, we'll see what day four has in store for us.

photos:via Fashion GPS