At Engineered Garments, Daiki Suzuki has both the best materials and the best production—but it’s not enough for the menswear icon to simply rely on quality. To really be the best, you have to innovate. Season after season, Suzuki tweaks the pieces core to the Engineered Garments lifestyle: The chore coat, the carpenter pant, the button-down shirt, the suit, and the jumpsuit. The updates are so small they wouldn’t register to the untrained eye: say, a spread collar instead of a tab collar or a wabash stripe instead of a railroad one. But this closer-than-close attention to every element of clothing is what makes Engineered Garments so coveted by menswear obsessives.

For Spring 2020, Suzuki and co. have underwritten their functionalism with a bit of French esprit. The blue of France’s famous workwear jackets appears throughout, as does a new five-pocket jean style with a wide thigh and slight taper to the leg that is an homage to François Girbaud. Elsewhere a handmade cotton bouclé jacket with double pockets is a nod to Coco Chanel, bien sur. But these are the most literal examples of Suzuki’s Gallic references. A hibiscus Hawaiian print appears on cotton; a random, all-over Madras runs through the shirting; and there is, of course, lots of Engineered Garments’s universally beloved ripstop separates and cargo pants. In describing the overall mood of the season, a brand representative used words like fun and joyous. Sure, they might be two of fashion’s most common bon mots, but in this instance they actually do apply.