Hot and Covered...Billy Reid Wins GQ/CFDA 2010

Billy Reid Wins
GQ/CFDA
2010 Best New Menswear Designer In America

Congrats to Billy Reid. GQ announced to today that he was awarded “2010 Best New Menswear Designer In America.” “William ‘Billy’ Reid grew up Amite, Louisiana, just south of the Mississippi line. In 2004, he launched Billy Reid, a collection with roots in the designer’s Southern past. Today, Billy works out of his flagship shop and studio in Florence, AL. The store is furnished with Reid family heirlooms, and serves as a lodestar for his other boutiques. Additional Billy Reid shop locations include New York City, Nashville, Charleston, Charlotte, Dallas, and Houston.” As the winner he’s taking home some money, some shop placement, and (and maybe the most important) placement on GQ’s September 2010 cover.

The 2010 nominees are Burkman Bros designers Doug and Ben Burkman, Richard Chai, Caulfield Preparatory, designer Vincent Flumiani, Frank Muytjens for J.Crew, Billy Reid, Unis designer Eunice Lee. Good luck to them all.

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Billy Reid Spring/Summer 2010 Preview

If it feels like only a few weeks have passed since we featured Billy Reid’s AW09 collection to you, it’s because it was. That’s the way the fashion world works sometimes. Here’s a sneak peek at the Alabama based designer’s SS10 collection. There’s a heavy focus on footwear in the collection; penny loafers, chukka boots, brogues and deck shoes all make an appearance in a stellar showing.

Elsewhere the collection keeps on truckin’, with strong knitwear, check shirts and chinos all made to the usual Billy Reid standards. The pictures we’ve used were taken by the great guys at Street Etiquette, one of our favourite blogs out there.

Take a leap to see the rest of the pictures.

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Billy Reid

Billy Reid

All you need to know about Billy Reid's approach to style can be gleaned from a few minutes in one of his stores. The walls will be decorated with antique oil paintings and sepia-toned photographs, gilded-frame mirrors and mounted stag heads. The salespeople will smile and offer you a glass of bourbon or sweet tea, and the shelves and racks will hold seersucker blazers and linen trousers, frayed work shirts and selvage-denim jeans. The music will be twangy. And if you're in the flagship store in Florence, Alabama, you might even run into Reid himself, bullshitting and backslapping with buddies, because Florence, Alabama, is where this designer of Southern-accented suits and sportswear chooses to live. "I was raised in the South and I live in the South," Reid says. "So I guess my clothes do have that vibe."

Reid first noticed said vibe as a kid growing up in Amite, a speck of land in the Louisiana wetlands where his mother owned a clothing store next door to the only men's shop in town. "The owner was a very, very sharp dresser — the kind of guy who wore a bow tie and didn't look out of place. He would mix patterns together, and I don't think he even owned a pair of socks. Those little things stuck in my head." Reid's interest in those little things led to an early career in fashion retail and marketing, and after a false start as a stand-alone designer (his debut line, William Reid, sputtered in the post-9/11 recession), he launched Billy Reid in 2004. Now, with six stores across the South and one in New York City's East Village, Reid serves up two full men's-wear collections a year that range from comfortably cut handmade suits and jackets to silk-screened T-shirts and khakis that will outlive us all. He also has a few signatures. "There's not one spring season that goes by that we don't have a white or off-white suit. We do one every spring," Reid says. "We keep saying, 'Let's evolve it, let's move past it,' but, man, it's just what we do." He do it well.

10 Essentials: Billy Reid: 10 Essentials: GQ

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"Very Tasteful,
He do it well!!!!"



the portastylistic