'dunhill Compendium', The New Autumn Winter 2021 Collection

"For this collection, I wanted to focus on clothes rather than themes, on individual garments and accessories and what they stand for in their own right," says Mark Weston, Creative Director of dunhill.

"This is something that seems more appropriate when a collection is looked at in detail rather than shown and seen at a distance. Last season was about stopping and assessing; it was about the rigour of process. This collection still has that, for one, there is an inquisitive exploration of the expertise of tailoring. But there is also the joyful immediacy of found objects as well as the domestic and homespun, personal and playful moments underpinned by the rigour of formality and utility. There is an idea of the multi-functional as well as a summation of particular elements in collections we have completed so far. Things are brought together in that very British way: scruffily stylish confidence. It is a balance between moments of naivety and playfulness, against sophistication; it's about masculinity, not whimsy."

Featuring objects of both provenance and purpose, 'dunhill Compendium', the Autumn Winter 2021 collection, is a play between the homespun and urbane, of utility and formality, brought together with an easeful, almost slovenly sophistication. In many ways, it is a reflection on how we live now, together with a summation of dunhill past, present and future.

At the heart of the collection is the 'dunhill Compendium Parka', a multi­ functional garment that can be worn in various ways. Inspired by an object from the dunhill archive - a utilitarian, multi-functional men's compact, featuring different practical tools in miniature - the coat can be zipped away to become ajacket, its lining detached to become a separate garment in its own right. All is achieved in luxurious yet practical materials, utility, function and elegance finding form in one everlasting, yet always changing item.

A summation of new era dunhill signature styles and materials occurs in the collection. Amongst them, the Wrap Jacket, Split Hem Trousers, Seat Strap Shoes, Lock Bag, silk moire and bonded, paper leather all appear, both evolved and resolved in a multiplicity of ways. The chicness of practicality, immediacy and multi-function are further explored in the idea of found objects, such as the domestic knits, featuring a combination of typically British styles - an Aran, garter and cardigan stitch, amongst others - that are at once familiar and odd in this context. So too are the reversed silk jacquards, found in the archive of one of  the great Italian mills, made abstract when inverted and used here for both clothing and accessories, including the new Cummerbund Bag. dunhill's bespoke clothing also makes an appearance in the collection, completed to order by the tailoring workshop at dunhill House and led by a new, raw-edge design sensibility.

Ideas of tradition, inheritance and continuity run throughout the collection, together with a certain iconoclasm in their treatment; it's a very British dichotomy where symbols of class and creativity are brought together in insouciant style and worn with a don't-give-a-damn attitude.