Creations by Bartlett ’85 Hit the Runway

Watching the chiseled, almost androgynous male models walk the runway in neutral colored sweater vests, skinny ties, and color-blocked blazers at New York Fashion Week felt like fashion déjà vu of a normal day at Harvard.

As I was sitting (next to Fabio!) at the runway show of menswear designer John P. Bartlett ’85, each of the models might well have been the paradigm of a Harvard male, stepping out the door of his final club.

“It’s very much about the Ivy League,” Bartlett said of his Fall 2007 collection. “It’s about classic East Coast heritage, the button down and the cable-knit sweater, things that I remember from my fantasies about Harvard.”

The collection pays homage to how Bartlett imagined Harvard students would dress before he arrived on campus as a freshman. Bartlett, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, had visions of boys strolling to class in cashmere tennis sweaters. Instead, he found “a lot of people running around in sweatpants.”

Yet his collection, featuring brightly colored socks, plaid suits, and military-influenced jackets, is more than straight Brooks Brothers.

After getting to Harvard, Bartlett struggled to find a place in the student body.

“I didn’t quite know where I fit in,” he said. “There were so many kids that were so clear about what they wanted to do with their lives.”

Though originally recruited for the diving team, Bartlett instead immersed himself in Boston’s underground club scene, becoming part of the New Wave movement. It was there that he began to find artistic expression through the outfits he created for clubbing nights.

A sociology concentrator, Bartlett said he wished he had studied visual and environmental studies or fine arts, but never considered entering the fashion industry during college. Six months after graduating from Harvard, Bartlett moved to New York City and started taking night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Starting with only $5,000, Bartlett began making clothes out of his apartment. Buzz built and in 1992 Bartlett showed his first collection. Over the next decade, his fashion shows would become famed as much for their spectacular aspect as for Bartlett’s high-concept clothing.

For example, his Fall 1998 show featured a blonde man wearing a green cape, sitting atop a horse. At one fashion show, Bartlett used all black models. Another runway show featured an (impeccably-suited) voodoo priest fondling a live chicken.

In 2002, however, Bartlett says he had a fashion crisis.

“When I first began, I was very experimental, and I was into creating very interesting pieces for men,” he said. “But I had gone out of control from my original idea, and my fashion shows had become big theatrical events.”

Bartlett decided to put his business on hold for a year, something that is rare in the fashion industry. He went to Cambodia and Thailand, practicing Buddhism and yoga, and finding himself.

After his hiatus, Bartlett stepped back into the industry with a small collection shown at the Harvard Club of New York. Since then, he’s become a more down-to-earth designer, offering clothes that are classic and sensible, while still being edgy.

“I can’t say the word is more ‘commercial’ but it’s definitely more approachable,” said Jim Moore, creative director of GQ Magazine. “There’s still the John Bartlett, but these are the clothes that are going to sell.”

“He’s influenced by arts and culture and what he’s interested in, and it doesn’t have to be what’s in fashion this season,” said Moore, citing Bartlett’s intellectualism as what sets him apart. “There’s a lot of passion on the runway, and you kind of know what John Bartlett has been thinking.”

Bartlett recently opened a factory in India so his clothes can be more reasonably priced. He said the going price of his clothing (about $220 for shirts and $250 for pants) is about half of what he would charge if the clothes were made in Italy. His goal for now is to open a retail store New York City, preferably in the West Village.

As Bartlett made the usual designer’s after-show appearance on the runway, he was wearing his own signature wide-cuffed pants and color-blocked blazer. Let’s just say it’s rare that any fashion designer could look as comfortable as he did in his own designs. That’s likely because Bartlett seemed to be designing for himself: an independent, urban man looking for classics yet also wanting to differentiate himself.

—Staff writer Anna L. Tong can be reached at tong@fas.harvard.edu.