All Hail Hamilton.

Having been nominated a grand total of three times for the Swarovski Award for Menswear it was only just (considering his extensive and best-yet work this year) that Tim Hamilton finally secured his clutch on the award at the CFDAs last night.

Thus, a designer profile of sorts seems fitting. Or rather, a fan-boy appreciation of his aesthetic that’s drawn together the disparate, oscillated considerably (but always with ace results) and undoubtedly revoutionised menswear over the course of a few fleeting seasons in fashion.

Hamilton was born in Iowa (perhap fellow Iowa-native Halston set the trend for success) to a Lebanese-mother and an American-English father, and with such a background of diversity it’s easily understandable that his design sensibility is just as varied. Interestingly his father worked in construction which is what, perhaps, chiefly informed his AW07 collection, a fusion of rugged workwear with preppy detailing: robust lace-up boots and shoes in rich, dark brown or black, industrial grey knits and an assortment of rumpled pants in muted shades, all offset (or is it complimented?) by Oxford button-ups and a covetable array of neck- and bow-ties.

Aw 07

As part of his career Hamilton held stints at both J. Crew and Ralph Lauren, the bourgeois prep of the latter emerging in his SS08 collection – a veritable playground for a crayon-colours-obsessed white-collar kid. The collection embodied Hamilton’s shifting from workwear seriousness to the edgy joie de vivre he’s become synonymous with: bright and positively bursting royal-blue and cartoon-ketchup red incorporated into looks quite straight-laced, yet still with potential for playfulness.

SS 08

And he’s not been slacking in recent years. 2009 saw Hamilton make his most extensive progression so far with the production of two stellar collections of menswear and his womenswear debut for AW09. With his SS09 embodiment of quirky minimalism Hamilton single-handedly rekindled my love for metallics and shirt bib-detailing (not to mention the quiff), oh and the cropped longjohns of AW09 – you so would.

SS09

AW 09

Here’s to many more years of Tim.

Images from Men’s Style