Adam Kimmel smiles as he recounts a special project where the enfant terrible of the New York art scene, Banks Violette made a bonfire out of his last collection - "It was his way of expressing something with the clothes." More than other designers who merely pay a lip service to the arts, Kimmel walks it like he talks it. This is the man who looks to the rumpled elegance of Willem De Kooning as inspiration for his collections and casually features his friends in his iconic lookbooks, an assortment of the art world's finest from Ryan McGinley, Rita Ackerman, and Slater Bradley. Asked about using this infinitely more intriguing mix of personalities as opposed to blank-eyed models he shrugs, "It's a crowd I think is cool. These are people that I see wearing the clothes."

Part of a new wave of American designers taking cues more from the high tech and function of sportswear rather than the over-ornamentation of European design, his clothes are luxurious simplicity defined. Classic silhouettes from the 40's are cut in a more generous American fit and revised for today. A "retinal upbringing" from his artist mother was integral in pushing him from his architectural background to fashion design. "All of design is very similar - it's all about form and material. It's about the values you put into it." The fun comes out in his fabrics - "the fabrics I like to play with are from some masculine context. Like chamois cloth or painter's fabric. Things that are a bit strange and people aren't used to it but they come from a good place."

Like the very best menswear designers (Hedi Slimane, Alexandre Plokhov) he has seen his clothes appropriated by the more daring of the female species and he couldn't be happier. "I don't design for women. I depict women in my lookbooks only because I have a female customer. I like women who look good in men's clothing and I try to promote that. There is something nice about the simplicity and cut of menswear that certain women can pull off. I think it's very sexy."

For S/S 08 he focused in on "New York in the early 50's. I usually take a group of characters, or a scene from NY and focus in on their world and lifestyle. For this collection, I focused in on Neal Cassady, Larry Rivers, Ted Jones. For S/S I employed more personality than I've ever done and that came out in the fabrics. Not funky fabrics, more classic fabrics. But to me they feel a bit funky because I haven't really seen them put together like old checks, and houndstooth and stripes." And of course, this collection features his staple piece, the jumpsuit. "There's only so much you can do with a jumpsuit. But it updates with the fabrics. It's not anything I invented obviously. But I just do it how I wanna do it because it is something personal."