Clash of the Tartans

Dead men don’t wear plaid. But the variegated pattern popularized by the Duke of Windsor in the 1920s is alive and well in menswear for fall, 1991.

To wit, at the recent Men’s Fashion Assn. gathering in Rye, N.Y., designers played matchmaker with tartans, classic glens, Western ombres, windowpanes and buffalo checks. They mixed them on everything from suits and sport coats to wool bombers and hooded toggle coats.

Although the results were sometimes sophisticated, more often the haphazard combinations put a wonderfully wacky twist on the American man’s wardrobe.

Andrew Fezza and Barry Bricken took a dressy approach, layering traditional suit plaids on softly tailored sportswear. Henry Grethel whimsically mixed plaids with fruit prints on casual sport shirts. And Ron Chereskin and Tommy Hilfiger showed blazers with subtle checks over printed polo shirts.

However, it was the playful patchworks, bombastic color combinations and irreverent pattern mixes by several new designers that offered the most creative plaid tidings.

Rick Dunnington had the L.A. man in mind when he cleverly teamed tartans and checks on cotton sportswear.

Wallace Muroya, who won last year’s Rising Star Award from the California Mart, successfully combined big, bright-colored windowpanes on unstructured blazers and mismatched shirts and trousers.

And Ben Narasin for the Boston Prepatory Co. stitched tartans and houndstooth on patchwork shirts and blazers that had the backwoods written all over them.