Robert Geller

Robert Geller launched his namesake menswear collection in New York in 2007. The German-born designer had worked at Marc Jacobs and at Cloak with Alexandre Plokhov, experiences that informed a label where European romanticism met the practical habits of city dressing. The clothes encouraged an individual wardrobe assembled over time.

Geller’s design language developed through fabric treatments and changes of proportion. A washed surface could soften the authority of tailoring, while a long shirt or a loose trouser altered the balance of a jacket. Muted shades often formed the background for more unexpected color, giving the collection a mood that extended beyond any single garment.

Recognition followed with GQ’s Best New Menswear Designer in America award in 2009 and the CFDA Swarovski Award for Menswear in 2011. His separate Gustav von Aschenbach line, introduced in 2017, explored a more accessible approach to the designer’s interest in color and ease.

The namesake collection’s archive records a particularly personal chapter of New York menswear. Its combinations of sportswear and tailoring offered an alternative to rigid ideas of dressing formally, with clothes that rewarded attention to texture and the relationship between layers.