Curly was the order of the day. Not just the curly fries (and milkshake) I gorged on beforehand, but also over at Milk studios, where it seemed like Patrik Ervell’s sole instruction to his casting director had been “Give me boys with locks.”

In a few years, the designer’s shows have gone from smallish family-and-friends affairs to being a men’s highlight of the New York collections. And it was an accordingly packed house for his latest offering, presented against a backdrop of what looked like a gigantic white bed sheet that billowed—along with the ‘fros—in machine-generated winds as a playlist by Scott Mou blared from the speakers.

Ervell’s clothes have always been eminently wearable, but befitting the label’s growing stature, the Ervell man is looking sharper with every season. Come fall he will be donning narrow suits and overcoats in cashmeres, tweeds and a rainbow of grays. It was an almost conservative collection, until the finale’s refreshing exception: faux-leather blue overalls with a zipper in every corner. Ervell’s forte, however, remains the jacket, and there was no dearth of options in that department, with bombers, baseball jackets, a yellow hooded windbreaker reminiscent of the designer’s early collections and, most enticingly, a camel-colored moleskin parka that was begging to be owned by me.