Dominant Gene

Cult designer Gene Meyer, this year's recipient of the C. F.D.A men's accessories award, is fed up with "parodied, bastardized, pseudo-Wasp dowdiness," and he's got the antidote—splattering the stuffy world of men's wear with pyrotechnic eruptions of pattern and color. "Why do people think that color is toxic?" he asks. "Look at the sky, look at flowers! Men wear bright golf or beach clothes and dress their children colorfully. Why do we reserve color only for the things that give us the most joy? It must be that American Puritan streak." Though Meyer (who as assistant to Geoffrey Beene for 11 years learned "to pioneer the future") feels that the past has been "regurgitated to the point where we've made a mess of it," he still reveres the modernist tradition. Matisse's figurative paintings, "piling up zingy stripes and polka dots," are, he says, "definitely a big influence." So are the arty, fullpalette wardrobes of Picasso, Hockney, and Braque. In spite of his wild-eyed rainbow worship, Meyer has the restraint to realize "you can't force too much change on men. They are creatures of habit. My aim is to take a concept that is eccentric and make it more mass."

AMY FINE COLLINS