Menswear is such a tricky area to get right. If you stick to the basics you’ll be branded as boring. But if you go creative then you’ll only attract a small client base. Yes, menswear is a limiting area and I expect it’s exciting for designers to try and tackle this challenging market. For autumn/winter 09 Carolyn Massey has found the perfect balance between everyday, wearable clothing and more design driven styles, ideal for the adventurous.

Tailored suits were edgy and the long length blazers made a nice change from the usual casual jacket. Capes and high shine jackets were definitely for the more fashion forward man. Bow ties added personality and strangely sat well against the more post grunge looks.

Since it’s our first interview here at MFL For Him, it was kind of big deal that we set it off accordingly with an estimable menswear designer that approbates the enduring British sartorial codes of yesteryear. Some may think anachronism and traditionalist, but we think timeless strewn in with avant-garde when it comes to Carolyn Massey’s aesthetic. Hot on the heels of her AW08 Topman diffuse line, we decided to catch up with Massey to muse on fashion and life.

How did the seasonal diffusion line with Topman come about?

I was approached in my 1st season by Matthew Murphy from B Store who coordinates the LENS area. We started with a capsule collection seasonally, but the area has taken off so well that we are expanding up to 4 collections a year, and I’m excited to also be designing accessories to compliment the range.

How do you approach the design process?

My work is an ongoing love affair really. This is the reason I find it hard to write a press release of “this season its all about X!” My work follows similar themes, my research delves deeper each season. I feel like Im constantly searching, researching for ideas- research is my strength, so its completely ongoing and evolving. I am always gathering imagery and garments, I gather these together to form a story in time for a collection. I start by researching, but always imagery that I have picked up will be in my mind. I take photographs a lot, and my idea of heaven is spending a day researching in the library at the Royal College of Art, where I studied.

What’s the most defining moment thus far in your career?

I have moments of “oh my god how is this happening?!” But then quickly reality bites. I don’t help myself as often if something amazing happens I’ll have a moment of “that’s great!” But then it will be all about how I can push things further. Always- in almost a self-torturing manner.

Outside of fashion related work, what is your favourite pastime?

Dinner! Fabulous dinner out great food great service. Good and mind expanding conversation (which is rare and amazing these days) and then drinking so much gin I forget it all…. well you have to let go sometimes non?!

What are you reading now?

Currently as many books about Tokyo as I can get my hands on- I’m off for a week in mid november as I have been sponsored by the British Fashion Council to take my collection over there and present it in the English Embassy. Its an amazing opportunity for me. Other than that, re-reading Oliver Sacks’ “The Man who mistook his wife for a hat”.

As a child, say between the ages of 5 to 10, what did you want to be? Moreover, if not fashion design, what other career path would you see yourself in?

At the age of 5 I asked to be sent to boarding school. It was the most amazing time, and I can see now that this has formed my obsession with all things ‘proper’. But as for a career, I had no idea. If not fashion design, I’m not sure…maybe photography.

With all the embellishments of bows and ruffles in your designs, there’s a tad bit of androgyny and femininity that seeps into the collection. Any chance of womenswear line from Carolyn Massey?

I have just been appointed Creative Director of a womenswear label that will launch in February over london fashion week.

You’ve been heralded as a designer that seeks to relive the sartorial code of ‘what it is to be a gentleman.” What’s your idea of the perfectly dressed gentlemen? Are there any present day prototypes you take inspiration from?

This was my comment on societies assumptions of man and how this can be distorted through dress. This is something I am quite intrigued in.

Everyone who’s taken a look at your collection with Topman has been smitten with the Sherlock Holmes-esque cape. What was the inspiration behind this piece?

It was actually an idea from a Dutch nurses cape! I’m obsessed with researching- flea markets, especially in Paris, hold a wealth of inspiration.

Sum up your aesthetic in three words?

Dark, Romantic. Fabulous.

Seasoned from the success of her SS08 diffusion line at Topman, Carolyn Massey makes a return to Lens with a distinctive aesthetic that continues to venerate, but in a bolder fashion, the romanticism and gothic charm that filters through 18th and 19th century English fashion.

Massey injects an old English familiarity of neutral hues—black, white, grey—with the occasional bright colour to harken us back to a sartorial code that is part moody, part romantic, but part avant-garde.

Winged-collar and bib front shirts pop up throughout the collection as does an all-too unconventional Sherlock Holmes-esque cape. Despite Massey’s reverence for age-old fashion, a twinge of modernity is thrown into the mix by virtue of her silhouettes. One gets a timeless feel to the collection—the cape’s simplified lines and capacious qualities makes it an enviable winter coat—that ultimately renders a contemporary portrait to these antique items.

Come September, be on the lookout for Carolyn Massey’s AW08 collection in the Lens area at Topman Oxford Circus, Laforet Harajuku (in the Shibuya area of Tokyo, Japan) and online as well at the Topman debut in New York.