Subversive. The word runs through Alexander Wang’s conversation and not surprisingly so; he made his name and built his own company by connecting with brash young street culture.
Yet on the storied-house horizon, balance is all, especially through a new designer’s seasons-long process of claiming the house as his own. With his fall Balenciaga collection, Wang made a bold, engaging move — or started to. “I want to approach design [with] something much more subversive and irreverent [in] looking at these classical notions,” he said during a preview. “I try to respect the heritage and the history, but also add a twist.”
Twist he did: Out of the gate, mixing meaty fabrics — tweeds, windowpanes, bouclés — in looks grounded in the architectural curvature of the house founder, sometimes with heightened severity. And he piled on glamour jewelry derived from (without copying) the in-house heirloom loot, fastening a sexy wrap skirt with a flower brooch; closing a coat with a dramatic diamanté dagger. Between silhouette and sparkle, there was a lot of lady going on. Only Wang perverted the message sagely by exposing this lady’s inner tough girl. She wore flat, aggressive boots, covered her ears in multiple baubles and amped up the hardware. Her long, shirred mink gloves flashed single, big grommet holes on the back of the hands, and her chic ensembles featured rows of staples in place of finely sewn seams. She looked fashion-fearless.
You May Also Like
Then Wang hedged. (There’s been some of that among the young set this week.) It worked with young career-girl shirt-and-skirt get-ups niftied up with mink mufflers and slides, and single pastel slashes across the skirts. But when he felt compelled to present the lady in her natural state, Wang tempered his message. Of course, most paying customers don’t want to work a clunky sour-puss boot with a cocktail dress. Change the shoe, change the look. They get it; they’re smart. They probably don’t want bubble-front hobble skirts they can’t walk in, either. (Luckily, a pair of divine mink-trimmed dresses avoided the problem.) On that point, those ladies and their grimmer, grimier runway alter egos agree. We know that deep down, Alex does, too.