Talk about a hayseed! John Patrick was totally chanelling his inner hick with his Spring ‘09 collection, presented as a tableau vivant on the hyper-Baroque stage of an old Victorian building complex that’s now the Desmond Tutu Center on the West Side of Manhattan.

It was a stunning collection, filled with organic cotton check and dobby blouses, herringbone blazers, madras jackets and matching shorts, surplus cotton voile dresses, organic denim, a vegetable tanned leather moto jacket, and some pants in recycled polyester.

Check out his Fall/Winter ‘08 line now on the John Patrick Organic site, on sale now.

These full shorts are flattering, chic, and miles away from the usual boring cropped options.

The veggie-tanned leather moto jacket (leather is a super-sustainable material that can last for decades if cared for, but it’s often tanned and dyed with super-toxic chemicals that pollute waterways the world over; vegetable tanning is a natural way to cure the leather without adding to the chemical load the world already carries).

‘American Gothic’ was the inspiration for the collection because, “Today, facing the challenges that seems as vast, if not vaster [than the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 30's] what I see all around me are people working to create something new. They’re rebooting the system,” says John Patrick.

John Patrick smiles with one of the models while photographers (including me!) capture it all.

All images by Starre Vartan