After nearly five years at MR Magazine, the small town nature of the menswear industry still delights and amazes me. So often I'll walk into a showroom or a trade show booth and see somebody I know. Sure, often enough it's somebody who's just jumped over from a similar collection, but it's also often people from my alma mater, the Fashion Institute of Technology, or people I used to work with.

And, as if to prove the point, the day I started writing this blog, I ran into Joe Thiel, who is now at Denise Williamson Showroom and whom I used to work with at an advertising agency about nine years ago. I also had lunch with Carl Rosoff, at Cullen, and it turns out we both have a mutual friend from back when I worked at the American Institute of CPAs! Now that's what we call six degrees of separation. More about the great collection I saw at Williamson, Riviera, and Rosoff's knitwear line, Cullen, later. What really got me on this tangent was how pleasantly surprised I was when I recently stopped by the Greg Norman showroom and ran into Bjorn Bengtsson!

Pictured below: Morgan-leigh Norman, Bjorn Bengtsson and Dana Coppolino.

Bjorn is now Director, Design and Merchandising at Greg Norman (with another familiar face, CEO Mike Setola), but he and I worked together when I was still at F.I.T., and got a job at Marc O'Polo. The boutique on Manhattan's Upper West Side was the U.S. outpost for a Swedish retailer with stores all over Western Europe. Bjorn was already in the States when he was scooped up by Marc O'Polo to head up what we were hoping was going to be a Swedish invasion. I knew he was a smart guy with a great taste level back then...what I didn't know was how quotable he'd become!

"How do you do something new for the customer who is always looking for the same thing?" was Bjorn's lead-in to Greg Norman's collection. "Performance is here to stay in golf—so we design from the yarn up."

And true to his word, the collection is pretty basic, but offers innovation in terms of soft textures (despite performance fabric's tendency to feel "cold"), engineered panels throughout the garment for perspiration management, UV protection and the addition of something called ion 75. Like those bracelets we see on holistic healing websites, Greg Norman has embedded titanium directly into the fibers in order to counteract the effect of being surrounded by electronic gizmos which deplete our bodies' ions. The collection's fashion take includes patterns that are heat-embossed, and an energizing palette. Bjorn has also introduced an update to the familiar Greg Norman Panama-style hat—Bjorn's take is a little more Justin Timberlake.

When I asked if there were any plans to take the collection to a sportswear audience, Bjorn said the company is perfectly happy supplying golf retailers. Their women's line was re-launched for spring 2010, and the brand also had the privilege of designing uniforms for this year's President Cup players (Norman is this year's captain).