Balmain 2012 Fall/Winter Lookbook

As we quietly approach the official start of summer with the June solstice, Parisian designer label Balmain Homme looks forward to the dead of winter presenting its 2012 Fall/Winter Lookbook, coming five months after the initial collection images surfaced on the web here. Photograph with a vintage militaristic aesthetic, the forthcoming collection draws inspiration from the imperial armies of centuries past with lush palettes and immaculately conceptualized outerwear. Furthermore, the renowned fashion house will continue with its signature minimalist designs, acutely tailored cuts and fine leather division. Impressing the fashion realm once again in his sophomore year at the helm of Balmain Homme, Olivier Rousteing has certainly claimed his spot among today’s top designers.

A Kind of Guise 2013 Spring/Summer “Viva la Mexico” Collection Preview

Fresh from Munich’s A Kind of Guise comes a preview of their South-of-the-border-inspired “Viva la Mexico” collection. Heavily influenced by the Mexican artifacts found at the Weltkulturen Museum of Frankfurt, AKOG utilized color tones and bleached shades to create garments that payed homage to the mystically charged culture. One part historical project and equal parts an imagined experience of traveling through Mexico, expect to see the “Viva la Mexico” collection hitting their web store in the very near future. - Selectism

All in a day's work - Park and Bond

How to keep your cool at the office, even in the summer heat. The rising mercury presents a distinct challenge for office attire: looking your best without also looking like you commuted through a sprinkler. To help you pull off this amazing sartorial feat, we went and put some of our favorite summer looks through their paces in an actual office environment ... ours. To add to the verisimilitude, we set each of these looks—a crisp khaki suit from Belvest, Mediterranean blue loafers from A.P.C., bold selvage cotton shorts from Bespoken, and more—in an actual(ish) office scenario. Think: presenting the latest results at the company all-hands, making the most of a chance hallway encounter with the company chairman (played by actual Gilt Chairman Susan Lyne), or trying in vain to get a projector to work for a meeting with the CEO (yep, that’s our founder and CEO, Kevin Ryan). The afternoon nap may be a tad unrealistic, but the dressed-up shorts look is for real. And so is the well-deserved beer after a long, hard day of getting stuff done and looking good while doing it.

Stylist: Jared Flint; Photographer: Andy Ryan; Producer: Ashley Boer; Groomer:Scott McMahan at agentoliver.com; Model: Philippe LeBlond at dna; shot on location at Gilt HQ and Artisanal Bistro. Special thanks to our colleagues at Gilt Groupe, particularly our featured extras: Susan Lyne, Kevin Ryan, Chris Halkyard, Marisa Todd, Anne-Marie Gauthier, Alexandra Steege, Mark Wunsch, Neil Decker, Jonathan Evans, and Chris Wallace.