Helmut Lang (Q4264)
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Helmut Lang is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Helmut Lang |
Helmut Lang is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2023
creative director
In fashion, we live in the future. For the last year that’s been particularly true for Helmut Lang’s Peter Do. Resort is his fourth collection for the label, yet his first is just recently in stores. There’s a lot of guesswork and instinct in relaunching a brand, even one owned by the massive Japanese company Fast Retailing, where data points and demographics no doubt come into play.Whether instinct or the retail picture informed this collection, Do drilled down to the Helmut Lang essentials here. “I want Helmut Lang to reach more people,” he said at a showroom appointment. His first step was to make it feel more casual. The lookbook opens with sweats—not gym wear, but rather slightly oversized, layerable pieces in muted enzyme washed colors. On top: a short sleeve top over a reversible polo-neck long-sleeve one, with another wrapped around the waist; and on bottom: long shorts over pants cut without elasticized hems. Basics but notbasic.The push-pull of simplification and elevation is evident throughout the lineup. A body-conscious dress in ultra-soft (and pill-resistant, he promised) “cloud jersey” can be worn long to the ankles or, with a few adjustments, draped and mini-length. And a cool snap-front denim shirt and jeans with a velvet treatment that gives them a slightly greenish sheen are machine washable, and as they wear and age, Do explained, the indigo of the denim will start to peek through.To my eye, even the more straightforward suits, with their fine materials and finishings and subtle details (like elasticized waistbands evoking Helmut Lang the man’s ’90s glory days), have a lot of bang for buck. Another fashion truth? It never stops moving, but slow and steady wins the race.
10 June 2024
Peter Do’s Helmut Lang debut came in for some sharp reviews. This season’s collection should do better. It was more confident and less fussed over than his first, and for a bonus he had Kirsten Owen, the archetypal Lang model, in pole position.Among the critiques last time was Do’s failure to recapture the vibe of a Helmut Lang–the–man show—that feeling of being in the room with the in crowd seeing new fashion as it was happening. The fact that it’s an exceedingly rare feeling doesn’t make people long for it any less. Do’s onetime boss Phoebe Philo had the touch, but it’s not something that can be taught. Can a revival ever really hope to recapture that original Helmut Lang feeling? It’s complicated: As Owen herself once put it, when asked by aVoguereporter about Lang’s heyday, “It was more of a smell than a memory, of raw concrete and hi-fi. Definitely a buzz.”What Do has going for him is his tenacity. Asked about his reviews, he said, “The last show was a foundational reset; we spent a lot of time working on those blocks [meaning silhouettes and patterns], and all of those blocks for spring became these. I couldn’t be here without doing that first.” He also mentioned rebuilding the atelier, and the months of trial and error that went into what he’s calling his “apex” story of tailored jackets and coats with seams and darts on the sleeves and from back to front that all point to the center. “I want people to be able to tell that this is Helmut tailoring from miles away,” he said. The cut of those suits is unimpeachable; tough in a way that does indeed feel reminiscent of Lang.Do said he was thinking about protection and projection, and how the two qualities are intertwined. The chin grazing collar of an oversize shearling aviator would ward off a chill and look boss too, while the mid-layer garment (to borrow a Virgil Ablohism, who borrowed liberally from Lang) modeled after a bulletproof vest was all projection—no good in a gunfight, but a useful accessory for accentuating a well-formed torso.The weakness in Do’s armor might be the literal lifts from the Helmut archive. For instance, the Chinatown bag plaids, whose fashion lineage traces from Lang to Philo’s Celine via Marc Jacobs’s Louis Vuitton, seem designed more for Instagram than real life. But as Do becomes more assured, he’ll learn to rely on them less and his own sartorial skills more.
9 February 2024
Peter Do is spending four days out of five at Helmut Lang; the other is reserved for his own line, though he admits he also works most weekends. It’s a big commitment, reviving and enlivening a contemporary brand of this scale. It’s a much bigger business than he’s used to, but also, he says, “there’s a lot more ambition, now that I’m here.”At his own brand he shows twice a year, for efficiency’s sake, so doing pre-season collections is new for him. Also, at Phoebe Philo’s Céline, he worked on the runway shows, which required a wow-factor mindset and less thinking about everyday wardrobing. But walking the rails that wrap around the Helmut Lang showroom, the impression is that Do is meeting his new challenges; he’s designing with a quiet assurance. You can easily see these clothes hanging on racks in stores (the brand is currently looking for a SoHo space for a new flagship) and imagine customers being attracted to their essential cool.This is particularly true of the denim that Do has made with one eye on the archive and the other on the here-and-now. The paint-splattered pieces, an OG HL specialty, are all done by hand; “we have this guy in LA that does it,” Do said. And the raw denim is cut with adaptable flap pockets, versatility being one of Do’s signatures. The tailoring, meanwhile, is made with an attention to detail that seems rare at these price points—see the inner waistband of the trousers for proof.Here and there, things get a bit too fussy, with excess straps and oversize proportions, but all the zippers you see have a function: The sleeves come off a leather biker jacket, and pants zip into shorts or go from straight-leg to flared. A two-in-one bomber puffer in black with white accents was a real standout.
8 December 2023
It was two Septembers ago that Peter Do made his runway debut after showing off-calendar for the first few years of his eponymous brand. Now he’s filling the shoes of one of the most famous and influential designers of the last quarter century.Helmut Lang walked away from his label in 2005, at the tippy top of his career, and in the years since his signature way of making the subversive elegant, elevating T-shirts, jeans, and army parkas to the level of high fashion and splicing bondage references into his lean suiting, has come to stand for everything that was cool in that era. Lang is a designer’s designer, with everyone from Raf Simons to Phoebe Philo quoting from work that, even as the decades turn, still looks resolutely modern, never retro. Do himself has namechecked him as one of his heroes. He might’ve osmosed that from Philo during his Céline days, but it was actually Tumblr that turned him onto Lang as a teenager in suburban Philadelphia.In the years since Fast Retailing acquired the Helmut Lang brand it’s cycled through many iterations, including a one-off collection designed by Hood by Air’s Shayne Oliver for spring 2018. The back-and-forth did nothing to lower Lang’s own stature—he makes art now in Long Island—but the recent collections themselves had lost a point of view. Do’s appointment seems poised to change that. “The thing that I react really strongly to is work that almost looks like it’s always been there. I felt like good design is a design that feels like it’s always been there,” he said onVogue’sThe Run-Throughpodcast.Do applied his super-fan’s eye for detail to the company’s history. The yellow taxi cab print that appeared in many fabrications was a callback to Lang’s then-agenda setting move of advertising on the top of taxi cabs, a format once considered too pedestrian for high fashion by his designer peers. And it also gave Do’s collaborator, the author Ocean Vuong, a theme for the poem that was printed on the concrete floor of the venue, calling back to the Jenny Holzer installation that was the centerpiece in the original Helmut Lang store at 80 Greene Street. His words also appeared on the backs of button-downs worn reversed so you could read them as the models walked by: “Your car was my first room / Our clothes on the floor like stepped-on flowers.
”Do also has a handle on Lang’s tailoring: the flat-front natural waist trousers, the androgynous, almost but not quite plain jackets, the crombie coats, all in fabrications that felt good in the hands at a showroom preview. The seat belt straps that criss cross the torso and pass through belt loops are straight out of the archive, a reference to the underground world of bondage clubs, but remove them and the suits will pass in the straight world.The potential for the new Helmut Lang lies in those high fashion suits at reasonable, less-than-high fashion prices. “We want to open up the dialogue to a wider group of people… and for the clothes to have longevity without being super expensive,” Do said, adding that he wouldn’t have taken the job if the prices here were the same as at his own label. That instinct to create immediate and obvious differentiation between the two brands he’s now responsible for is proof that Do is thinking big picture. He may be starry-eyed about his designer hero, but he’s got his head on his shoulders about the business.
8 September 2023
The Y2K time warp has snagged many contemporary brands of late, but Helmut Lang remains an outlier. While Lang the man was at his peak circa 2000, he wasn’t a practitioner of the tweeny, pastel-hued, velour with sequins look. If he had been it isn’t likely he’d be the fashion god he’s considered today, up there on Mount Olympus with Martin Margiela, another designer who exited the industry at the height of his success and fame.What we think of as Y2K style was less a product of the runways than it is an artifact of the glossy celebrity magazines—US Weekly and the like—that still dominated the media landscape in those early internet days. All that to say, Lang the brand circa 2022 is sticking to his codes.The foundation of the new collection is tailoring, streamlined and minimal, with an elasticized double waistband treatment bearing the house logo. Lang was known for traditional sartorial techniques like strips of rubber on the inner waistband to hold pants in place, and the logo is lifted from his inner waistbands, but for the uninitiated, i.e. the young customers this brand is targeting, it’s likely to read more like exposed underwear. That’s probably not a bad thing.Co-opting military uniform was another essential part of Lang’s repertoire. He made the parka a fashion item. Pre-Helmut, you couldn’t walk into a designer boutique and score one; it was the Army & Navy store, the vintage shop, or nothing. The brand’s fall 2022 parka is sharply done, with a useful button-out shearling lining. A cropped shearling bomber also looked on-brand.Rounding out the collection are dresses that play with sheer and opaque, and silk slips with lace insets of the sort seen from a lot of other contemporary labels. To this old Helmut-head, the interest here lies in the tailoring and outerwear.
11 February 2022
The design team at Helmut Lang heard the call of the sea for spring. Pictures of sailors and buoys were among the sources they pored over as they prepared a collection that had the requisite sailor pants and tops, but also broader takes on the theme, like the use of knotting and net. This tied in nicely with the season’s artistic “intervention” from artist Maia Ruth Lee, who created a series of bound sculptures, Bondage Baggage, that incorporated salvaged fabric from the design studio.With hybrid-work models starting to be put in place at many companies, the team wanted to find an alternative to traditional office attire, specifically the suit. Their proposal was sets, which can be a jacket and pants or adjustable pieces, like pants with detachable panels or vest-jacket combos. A water-repellent trench with a blue lining was a nice extension of the theme. Dresses with twisted straps or halters looked back to the spring 2005 collection, the last designed by Helmut Lang. “We’re all Helmut lovers and idolize what he did,” said one of the designers, “but we’re living in such a different world than 1998. So for us, I think every season it’s really exciting to take those ideas that were so revolutionary back then and reinterpret them in today’s world.”Familiarity and newness were among the designers’ aims. The challenge facing the brand in its current form is how to deal with its heritage. The label is not in the business of reissuing the founder’s designs but iterating on them—from a distance. It’s been 16 years since Lang left the company, so what’s familiar now could be Old Lang or After Lang. It really depends on who is looking. “I think someone who’s 25 maybe doesn’t know Helmut Lang from back in the day, but they like [the brand],” observed one of the team members. “Why? I think it’s because Helmut Lang always designed things you could live your life in, like five-pocket jeans. We’re not following this other path a lot of fashion brands are going down, which is hype and fast and crazy. We’re giving you really accessible things that can always evolve every season, that you wear every day, but there’s something special to it. You can wear something Helmut from 1995 today; it will still look amazing. I think that was the magic that he had.”
10 September 2021
Not far from where Mark Thomas and Thomas Cawson staged their second runway show for Helmut Lang the brand today, an exhibition of Helmut Lang the man’s latest artwork was opening. Lang walked away from his company 15 years ago, and in the interim, it’s gone through its fair share of incarnations. Perhaps because of the significant amount of time that’s passed or maybe because of the recent success of the reissue concept, Thomas and Cawson are taking a very faithful approach to their reimagining of this famous label.The reissue is a divisive concept. On the one hand, it’s a clever way to address youthful FOMO, on the other, it’s a design cop-out that doesn’t push the conversation forward. The pros see smart money and the cons insist fashion must reflect the present situation or it risks becoming costume. As with so many things, there’s a generational divide. The olds raise an eyebrow, but the youngs turn up in droves. Today, Jeremy O. Harris, Maisie Williams and her new boyfriend Reuben Selby, Charlie Plummer, Lucky Blue Smith, Selah Marley, and Paloma Elsesser all sat in the front row.Millennials, it would seem, are the target customers. But in fact, what Thomas and Cawson are up to looks good enough that the Helmut faithful might be intrigued. Absent a few dresses that read too sweet, this was an accurate accounting of Lang’s signatures: the minimal tailoring, the utilitarian parkas, the sheer elements, the chromed leather, the touch of latex kink, the denim shapes. Reproducing the electricity of anticipation that used to course through Lang’s show spaces is a much harder trick to pull off. And it’s probably not fair to ask it of Thomas and Cawson. Lang was an original.
8 September 2019
Not far from where Mark Thomas and Thomas Cawson staged their second runway show for Helmut Lang the brand today, an exhibition of Helmut Lang the man’s latest artwork was opening. Lang walked away from his company 15 years ago, and in the interim, it’s gone through its fair share of incarnations. Perhaps because of the significant amount of time that’s passed or maybe because of the recent success of the reissue concept, Thomas and Cawson are taking a very faithful approach to their reimagining of this famous label.The reissue is a divisive concept. On the one hand, it’s a clever way to address youthful FOMO, on the other, it’s a design cop-out that doesn’t push the conversation forward. The pros see smart money and the cons insist fashion must reflect the present situation or it risks becoming costume. As with so many things, there’s a generational divide. The olds raise an eyebrow, but the youngs turn up in droves. Today, Jeremy O. Harris, Maisie Williams and her new boyfriend Reuben Selby, Charlie Plummer, Lucky Blue Smith, Selah Marley, and Paloma Elsesser all sat in the front row.Millennials, it would seem, are the target customers. But in fact, what Thomas and Cawson are up to looks good enough that the Helmut faithful might be intrigued. Absent a few dresses that read too sweet, this was an accurate accounting of Lang’s signatures: the minimal tailoring, the utilitarian parkas, the sheer elements, the chromed leather, the touch of latex kink, the denim shapes. Reproducing the electricity of anticipation that used to course through Lang’s show spaces is a much harder trick to pull off. And it’s probably not fair to ask it of Thomas and Cawson. Lang was an original.
8 September 2019
It’s been a year and a half since the Helmut Lang brand staged a runway show. Back then, it was Hood By Air’s Shayne Oliver at the controls, and the one-off collection was more HBA than HL. Tonight, it was two unknowns: Mark Thomas and Thomas Cawson. Thomas, the creative director of men’s and womenswear at Helmut Lang, did stints at Joseph, Givenchy, and Neil Barrett; Cawson, the denim expert, headed up the global creative direction of Calvin Klein Jeans under the famous Lang fan Raf Simons.Both guys are old enough to remember the ’90s, when Helmut Lang the man was one of fashion’s defining voices, and their new collection is Lang-ian in the extreme: a mix of immaculate tailoring, stiff jeans, boxy slip dresses, and streamlined parkas, served up with a wink of kink.There were looks on the runway tonight that seemed plucked from Helmut collections: the sleek double-layer tank with the tuxedo pants; the white parka on white shirt on white pants; the Crombie coats. More so than Thomas and Cawson’s ability to reproduce them so definitively, the real marvel is how clothes from collections that are now two decades old look so modern. Could it be that minimalism ages better than other aesthetics? Or is that just me, having come up in the ’90s and spent more than I could then afford at Helmut Lang sample sales?A brand representative said that production has returned to Italy. That was the alchemy of Helmut Lang then: that the clothes had a casual attitude, but they were made with the care that typically went into much more formal attire. This latest version of Helmut Lang has a lot going for it.
12 February 2019
Fashion sees its fair share of revivals, but under Isabella Burley, its 26-year-old first-time editor in residence, the Helmut Lang label is rewriting the rule book. The brand has launched a Re-Edition collection of archival pieces by Lang himself, the Austrian autodidact who left his eponymous label in 2005 and in absentia has become the most influential designer of this decade. Burley is producing a yearlong artist series inspired by the collaborations Lang had with the likes of Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois. And, most notably, she’s hired Hood By Air’s Shayne Oliver as the label’s designer in residence.The last time Oliver put on a show in New York, for Spring 2017, he partnered with PornHub, slicked back models’ hair with “love juice,” and otherwise subverted the runway order. During its nearly three-year stint, HBA’s shows were always good theater, and its absence from the New York calendar last season was much lamented. Tonight hundreds of people crowded the sidewalk outside the old Pearl River Mart on lower Broadway to see Oliver’s debut. Would it be Langian? Oliverian? Would chaos ensue?The relaunch comes at a charged time. Thanks to the cyclical quality of fashion, Lang is much referenced by today’s designers, and the reinterpretations of his work have served to make the originals more valued. “It’s really important for Helmut Lang to be an authority on Helmut Lang again,” Burley said earlier this summer. The crowd at Pearl River was weighted toward her and Oliver’s generation, but there were plenty of others whose recollections of Lang shows past are still sharp. Opinions about this show are likely to divide along those lines.Lang is beloved for his minimalism, for making luxury items out of everyday staples, for a unisex approach to dressing, and for his fetish-y streak. You can guess which aspect Oliver was interested in. Yes, there was some attractive streamlined tailoring, and yes, again, there was a swanky black parka, and a baby pink one, as well. But what there was in abundance was kink: asymmetric bras and daring peekaboo harnesses, rearless pants suspended from the waistband like garters, leather codpieces, and strappy BDSM gear. Girls and boys both carried or wore patent bags that unzipped to create old-fashioned, hugely oversize brassieres.“What I liked the most was that [Lang made] staples, just things you needed. And everything else was built on some sort of fetishistic idea,” Oliver said afterward.
“That’s the only thing I brought back. I just wanted to bring back the vibe of sensuality.” He said he sees it as a reprieve from our politicized moment. Life is a cabaret. Did it get messy by Lang standards? You better believe it. That was the takeaway: Oliver’s irrepressibility.
12 September 2017
Helmut Lang, like the other God of ’90s fashion, Martin Margiela, is much referenced in 2016 collections. In its recent iteration, the label that bears his name paid not much heed to the Lang heritage, but in its new incarnation, the Helmut codes are being put to timely use. Those who wore the brand two decades ago and those who trawl eBay for vintage pieces will recognize through lines between then and now—now being the brand’s new Resort collection.Everything here from tailored jackets to fine-gauge knits had strapping details, a utilitarian-slash-decorative nod in Lang’s direction. The sand and red color combination of a fine-ribbed sweater and straight-leg silk trousers with a waistband strap is a matchup that Helmut used on occasion. There was also a sheepskin-lined parka. The parka is a de rigueur item everywhere now; remember, though, Lang was the first to put a designer spin on the functional outerwear way back when.The Helmut Lang design team, like Lang once did himself, has a good handle on the casual/formal way that urban creatives are dressing for their busy 18-hour days. “It has to be real,” said Selina Elkuch, who leads the team. That sounds like a simple formula, but sit through two weeks of Resort appointments and you’ll come to see it’s a tricky thing to get right. Best in show: a lace-trimmed black camisole half-tucked into the high waist of a pair of khaki cotton-silk cargos with utility zips at the ankles.
10 June 2016
This collection is distinguished byHelmut Lang’s use of color—blue in hues from Rothko to robin’s egg—and by his use of pleating and origami-like strips of fabric. Keeping the looks down-to-earth were flat, Chinese-style slippers; adding a touch of fantasy were belt bags that took the form of lush, bloom-like corsages.
22 March 2016
If you want to know what the contemporary floors at major department stores will look like in six months' time, go to a Helmut Lang show. Nicole and Michael Colovos' collection is a top seller at chains like Saks, Neiman Marcus, and Barneys. They were all in the front row tonight, and they'll be buying into the Colovoses' new message about texture in a big way. Like other designers this week, the husband-wife team have fallen hard for multi-ply knits, teddy bear fabrics, and fluffy mohair. "Spring was about flat, clean, crisp fabrics, and we wanted to flip that on its head," Nicole said backstage. That was never truer than in the case of two sweatshirts made from fur laser-cut in a deep, three-dimensional pattern. White or orangey red, put on one of those and you'll never take it off.One key to the show's success was its lightness. All the layers could've weighed things down, but even a funnel-neck, cocoon-shaped shearling jacket looked lofty, as if it had been injected with air. The Colovoses kept that theme going, cutting tunic dresses and the stovepipe pants they were worn with in graphic photoprints of the surface of Mars. Tailored separates in complementary solids—camel with red, or white with black—rounded out the collection. They'll appeal to the label's more minimally minded customers, but they didn't come close to those fur sweatshirts.
7 February 2014
Nicole and Michael Colovos designed Pre-Fall in the midst of a New York heat wave. It gave them fresh appreciation for lightness and layering, two apparently contradictory ideas that formed the crux of the new collection. Layering was so central to their story this season that they created short dresses with multiple hems to produce a trompe l'oeil effect. Other times, the designers piled as many as four different items into one look; in that case, what was imperative was keeping their fabrics as weightless as possible. No wrong moves there. Leather blazers, for instance, came with wool sleeves, or else a biker silhouette was whipped up in simple cotton. The cotton jacket was a thoughtful experiment, but it had nothing on the actual oversize Perfecto they cut in supple black leather—when something works, it works. As a motif, lightness continued into the shoes, a relatively new category for the Colovoses. Their oxfords are not only constructed from perforated leather, they're backless, too.
16 December 2013
It's still early days, but New York seems to be in the midst of a nineties moment this season. The nineties belonged to Helmut Lang. And Nicole and Michael Colovos, the designers of the current iteration of the label that bears his name, appeared to be riffing on his minimalist signatures tonight. It was most direct in a pair of bright pink boxy organza slipdresses, the precise pink that Lang himself favored, but there were also flashes of Lang in an unstructured black jacket bonded to white jersey—no shoulder pads, no lining—that slouched on as easily as a button-down shirt, and another in a soft peach color, as well as in the muscle tees and perfect trousers.Whether the riffing was intentional or not, the Colovoses weren't saying. It's not that they've avoided the house heritage until now, but the through lines have never seemed so strong. Backstage, they explained that they were looking at the work of the contemporary artist Wade Guyton, whose canvases are bisected with clean, straight lines. They reproduced Guyton's lines on a strapless linen dress with an easy, slouched-on sort of feel (prepare yourself to hear much more about slouchiness in the next few days), as well as on a strapless top and wrap skirt. Last season, their artistic reference point was Picasso, who produced a much busier collection. This one was mostly in black and white, which reinforced its pared-back appeal. "Not precious" is the vibe they said they were going for. They nailed it with flat slides in stingray and slip-on loafers constructed from perforated leather. Bags were a new addition to the lineup. Walking out there was consensus: a great collection.
5 September 2013
The emphasis in Resort collections is always on the commercial. That's the deal. Which creates a bit of a dilemma, one feels, when it comes to Resort collections from a brand like Helmut Lang. In its present incarnation, under the direction of Michael and Nicole Colovos, Helmut Lang is a very commercial label; beyond that, it has straightforwardness in its DNA, courtesy of the original Herr Lang himself.At any rate, the Resort collection the Colovoses presented today was altogether fine, but perhaps too matter-of-fact. The designers did well to approach the transitional season from the point of view of making mix-and-match, layerable clothes—this was not a Resort collection offering fantasies of early summers or tropical vacations, but one that dealt with the reality of not-quite-hot, not-quite-cold, changeable spring weather in a sophisticated and streetwise way. And the collection was strong too in its fabrications: The Colovoses had some particularly nice leather pieces here, like a slick snakeskin-embossed coat or a T-shirt with hand-embroidered leather bits arranged to look like crocodile. They also made measured use of technical materials; their strapless dress and adapted tuxedo looked especially sharp with a vinyl-like shine. Those items made you wish that the Colovoses had seen fit to take more risks with the rest of their looks—even in a Resort collection, a little nerve is welcome.
3 June 2013
Come early February in fashion circles, "I love Fall" is a common refrain. There's so much more for editors and buyers to latch onto with Fall collections. The coats! The boots! All those cozy layers! For designers like Helmut Lang's Michael and Nicole Colovos, who specialize in tailoring, this is the moment to strut their stuff, and strut they did tonight. Claiming the Guggenheim'sPicasso Black and Whiteexhibition by way of Richard Prince'sPrince/Picassoshow as inspiration, they delivered a strong collection with a Cubist motif that had echoes in what the husband-and-wife team described as the "sharp slouch" of the silhouette. It was a rebuff to a Spring collection that felt somewhat derivative and a reminder that they cut the sharpest pants in New York.To start, they showed a coat, a jacket, and then a dress in heather gray with heat-transferred laser-cut film shapes swooping and arcing across their fronts. The technique was particularly successful on a short jacket with cross-body closure that was shown with the Colovoses' great-looking stovepipe pants. Graphic, geometric patterns recurred throughout the collection, as a print on an easy dress with short leather sleeves and a leather waistband, and on another dress engineered from over 125 pieces of leather, felt, ponyskin, and silk. Most of it worked, save for a pair of too-busy suits in a black and white version of that print.If all that sounds a tad ornate, though, for every embellished piece, there was another one that was unadorned. A black coat with a contrast notched collar in gray and the double-breasted pantsuit worn underneath it skewed minimalist and sleek. As for cozy layers, it's hard to top a midnight blue rabbit fur jacket that they laser-cut for added depth and texture.
7 February 2013
After a departure on their Spring runway that found them embracing new hues like electric orange and sea blue, Helmut Lang's Nicole and Michael Colovos returned to more neutral ground for Pre-Fall. "Spring was pretty bright for us," Nicole admitted at their lookbook shoot last week. "This is a palette cleanser." But while the colors they chose were mostly black and ombré grays and blues, it wasn't entirely back to business as usual. The designers, who are best known for slouch and drape, continue to experiment with boxier, boyish silhouettes. Leather jackets have a cropped, squared-off cut, and linen pants with geometric patches of smooth leather conjured images of a baseball diamond or other sports fields. Must be those three young boys they have running around at home. The virtue of this collection, as with most of their work, was its edgy wearability.
2 December 2012
For five years now, Nicole and Michael Colovos have made the Helmut Lang contemporary brand synonymous with edgy urban cool, their design vocabulary dominated by asymmetric draping, distressed leather, and a palette of mostly neutrals and black. For Spring, they changed things up considerably—not the edgy, urban cool part, but the way they got there. The first point of difference was the color: surfer-bright slashes of orange or sea blue that appeared on a color-blocked tank dress or a reversible leather jacket. The second was the prints. Made in collaboration with the tattoo artist Thomas Hooper, scrolling medallion motifs decorated motocross jackets and short, fitted dresses; the jacquard print of a bright red crustacean on a T-shirt dress was inspired by the designers' own photo research of underwater creatures. With the sea as a central theme, many of the pieces they sent out had a slick, wet look.In their efforts to push the collection in new directions, the Colovoses moved themselves closer to the work of others. Color and print have been the big stories for several seasons now. No one owns them outright, of course, but the Colovoses' peers have certainly put their own stamps on them. It's a risky venture, breaking the boundaries of what has until now defined you, but the husband-and-wife duo did reap some rewards this season. The crab-claw cotton pants that opened the show—so named because of their baggy, slouched-on shape—had a sporty appeal that crossed over into boxy silk tees and snug-fitting jackets paneled with leather and canvas. Longtime believers in the line, meanwhile, will be pleased to note the appearance of an outfit consisting of motocross jacket, slick T-shirt, and silky shorts—all in black.
6 September 2012
Fall is Nicole and Michael Colovos' second season putting their Helmut Lang collection on the runway, and their confidence is growing. If their Spring outing erred a bit on the repetitive side, this was more freewheeling, yet still within the recognizable framework they've set up during their five-plus years at the brand. Recognizability counts for a lot, going by all the big-name retailers in the front row tonight. From the first look out—a white leather lapel-less blazer, glossy black skinny jeans, and black thigh-high wedge boots—you knew where you were. After that, the Colovoses touched upon their other staples: the wrap leather and fur jacket with the funnel neck; the draped jersey dress; the asymmetric sweaters and cobwebby knits.The freewheeling part came via the details. A stretchy dress was inset with the same armadillo-stamped leather that was used for the sleeves of a blazer. The fur on a belted jacket was dyed a rich shade of ruby red, a color as yet unseen in a collection from the Colovoses, who typically favor neutrals. And a red ponyhair jacket was laser cut in a delicate repeating motif. The prints were borrowed from nature—leafless branches of trees and hardened swirls of lava—but their shapes were resolutely urban. The only misfire was the low-slung, inverted pleat, full-legged trouser. It'd be a shame to cover up those killer over-the-knee boots.
9 February 2012
Nicole and Michael Colovos tend to find inspiration for their Helmut Lang collections from little-known artists or obscure works, but their starting point for pre-fall just might be their strangest yet. "We have all these pictures of spiderwebs made by spiders on drugs," Michael explained. The LSD spider apparently spins really intricate webs, while the pot spider's creations have big holes in them. The caffeine spider's is the most erratic, and that's the one they settled on for their latest outing. It turned up as a tone-on-tone design on skinny jeans and as a burnout motif on a delicate, featherweight sweater. In something of a surprise for the duo who prefer black both professionally and personally, it also appeared as a bold green, black, and white pattern on a leather-trim chiffon dress worn with matching leggings. There was more color where that came from in the form of a draped jersey dress in a brilliant lime green.But the designers haven't strayed so far from the contemporary brand's roots. The snug leather jackets and sharp-shouldered blazers beloved by their customers are back; they refreshed the former with curved "kissing" seams on the back and the latter with stamped metal hook closures made by a local jewelry designer friend. The other big news: The husband-and-wife team are launching a T-shirt line called Helmut that riffs on some of their favorite designs from the past; prices will start at about $95.
7 December 2011
Five years into their career at Helmut Lang, Nicole and Michael Colovos put their collection on the runway for the first time. Other designers in their situation might've felt obliged to add a few bells and whistles, but not this husband-and-wife team. They've built a real business on the consistency of their clothes' cool, urban vibe—lots of black, lots of leather, a sharply cut blazer for every slouchy T-shirt. And they didn't veer from the course with their solid Spring collection. The jackets were cropped and cut away high in back; the pants had the easy sensibility of sweats; the tees (and there were plenty of them) were asymmetric, drapey, and layered.For their prints, the Colovoses always riff on the work of a contemporary artist. This time it was Richard Serra. The oversize brushstrokes added the only note of color in the collection: sunshine yellow. The bra tops were something new (ditto the bared midriffs), but their customers will likely be happy to see them—try finding an edgy bra at Victoria's Secret. The closing looks, with their collages of sequins, leather cording, and embroideries, were a step in a crafty-couture direction the Colovoses hadn't explored before. But don't call them showpieces. "We'd never put something on the runway that we didn't believe in for sales," Michael said. Now that's a novelty.
9 September 2011
"Our girls don't do resort," said Nicole and Michael Colovos by way of explaining the cool, urban attitude of their latest collection for Helmut Lang. Where other labels are showing swimwear and getaway gear, their lineup is keyed more to the brisk weather typical of November, when the clothes arrive in stores. HL customers in the market for outerwear will find a lot to like here, a heathered gray wool puffer jacket with quilted charcoal leather sleeves in particular. A lightweight cashmere suit and a matching draped, strapless dress had a similar buy-now, wear-now appeal.The husband-and-wife duo have a thing for black and gray, but they've heeded the recent clarion call for color. Leigh Lezark wore their saffron-y asymmetric sheath to Monday night's CFDA Fashion Awards, and there were more brights in the showroom, from a sienna red to mustard. An overdyed pair of orange jeans will connect with the label's fans, likewise a sweater with cutouts at the shoulders and the tonal asymmetrical skirt it was paired with. The clothes' asymmetry was inspired, rather esoterically, by a book of Jan Kempenaers' photographs of Spomeniks. Monumental sculptures commemorating World War II found all over Yugoslavia, they were once tourist attractions but are now neglected and falling into disrepair. Something tells us this wearable collection won't suffer a similar fate.
6 June 2011
Dressed-down luxury is Nicole and Michael Colovos' MO at Helmut Lang. This season they found inspiration for the dressed-down part of the equation inCutting Table, a painting on aluminum by the contemporary artist Jaap de Vries. Taking its asymmetries as a starting point, the designers constructed their shearling jackets with uneven hems, added high slits to long knit dresses, and left seams raw—the better to give their downtown cool an extra dose of edge. As for the luxury, that came through in the focus on furs and the collection's new metal embroideries. The latter appeared on the shoulder of an easy, sleeveless draped wool dress and on the lapel of a cropped and fitted jacket.Regarding the furs, it's tough to know where to begin. The Colovoses say outerwear is one of their top categories, and looking at a reversible fur/black leather jacket or a shrunken shearling vest shown over a shearling motorcycle jacket, it's easy to see why. The cut and fit belie the easy-on-the-wallet contemporary price point. This season's de rigueur leather puffer jacket comes in at about $1,500, a relative bargain when you consider that the Colovoses are the only ones to quilt their sleeves differently for a snugger, more flattering fit. Having launched a handbag collection last season, they added a few new styles. The most interesting was a geometric clutch made from leather and patinated steel. Tough-chic is an overused term, but it fits.
14 February 2011
Nicole and Michael Colovos can be trusted to deliver downtown cool in dependably novel ways. Take, for example, a chalky white dress from their pre-fall collection forHelmut Lang. Its sleeveless, sexy cut isn't exactly predictable, but what really elevates it out of the ordinary and gives it the extra edge is its material: The soft, brushed linen is inset at the shoulders and waist with perch, an aquatic alternative to snakeskin. Fabric play is always key for the duo, and this season they created a print of abstract scribbles for drapey, narrow dresses by adding color to a photocopy of a photocopy of a…well, you get the picture. They treated leather in interesting ways, too, either tailoring it into a slim button-down or piecing it together for a boxy tee, the rough bottom hem of which is the natural edge of the hide. In addition to shirts and dresses, outerwear is a big part of the brand's business. One look at a black leather trench or a super-fitted, cropped jacket worn over an asymmetrical-hem dress, and you could see why.
12 December 2010
Nicole and Michael Colovos had twin boys over the summer, but they had a different baby to show off at their Helmut Lang presentation: a new bag collection. The fresh arrivals—washed and weathered leather envelope clutches, top-handle day bags, and oblong evening sacks on long leather straps—have much in common with the duo's clothes, i.e. they're studiously constructed to appear absolutely effortless. The best part: They don't look like anyone else's wares. As for the Spring collection, the husband-and-wife team's thinking was in line with other designers this week: fresh, airy, and light. Whites, taupes, and nudes for the most part replaced black; natural, organic textures dominated; and the overall silhouette was looser, more relaxed. A great-looking silk crepe jacket with a chiffon lapel, for instance, came unlined, which means it'll be as easy to slouch on as your favorite cardigan, but a heck of a lot more sexy.
14 September 2010
A Helmut Lang collection sans leggings, leather or otherwise? "It's been a big part of our business for several seasons," Michael Colovos, one half of the design team along with wife Nicole, acknowledged at his showroom. "But we felt this season called for a looser, lighter silhouette." To that end, the duo paired flared trousers with relaxed white washed- cotton shirts and roomy beige loose-knit sweaters. They also turned out plenty of creative takes on the classic menswear-inspired suit jacket, including one with pleating standing in for a collar and another with a gauzy scarf "lapel."And for those still coveting skinny legs and a tough-chic look, fear not—their denim collection featured extra-slim jeans worn with a faded denim and black leather biker jacket.
2 June 2010
Urban expansion—as in building modern structures on top of historic ones—was the lofty concept Nicole and Michael Colovos took as their starting point for Fall. In particular, the Helmut Lang designers looked at the work of Santiago Calatrava. You could see what they were getting at in the way they built up their shearling- or rabbit-collared, cropped, and fitted jackets with arching swatches of texturized wool, blistered leather, and neoprene. There was also the clever manner in which their stretch-denim jeans were seamed to keep the fabric snug around the bum and thighs. Likewise, the organic prints on their draped silk dresses were engineered to make the most of a woman's natural curves, while the tone-on-tone sequins of jersey dresses followed the sinew lines of the body.Never mind the architectural conceit, though. The real proof comes in front of the dressing-room mirror, and the Colovoses clearly know that. The building blocks underpinning the continued success of this contemporary line are fit, which the designers care passionately about, and the fact that you get so much fashion for the price.
12 February 2010
Fans of Nicole and Michael Colovos' edgy designs for Helmut Lang have something new to look forward to: The duo is introducing a denim-focused line for Spring 2010. There were a few tweaks to the main collection, too: They've taken a lighter touch to their asymmetric-sleeved tunics, peg-legged silk pants, and standout leather pieces. The designers cut a version of their popular moto jacket, for example, in waxed linen with mesh inserts. Less inspiring were the countless takes on the harem pant, which already feel like old news.As for their new venture, Michael Colovos said, "We wanted to explore the notion of denim as a fabrication, rather than just basic jeans." Translation: denim versions of classic Helmut Lang silhouettes that will be sold under the same label but merchandised separately. Particularly lust-worthy were the biker vest, leggings, and paneled miniskirt. After all, even the most die-hard urban warrior needs a break from black once in a while.
8 September 2009
Nicole and Michael Colovos were inspired by "erosion" for their latest effort—as in the erosion materials undergo over time, not that steady leak your 401(k) has developed the last several months. Suede leggings were treated to resemble rubbed-off metal, and the fabric appeared to melt away on a standout asymmetric-hemmed evening gown that underwent a burnout process. The Helmut Lang designers also experimented with mixing materials, cutting shirts and jackets in jersey with leather panels.Decaywas the buzzword, but the experimentation never got out of hand, and we predict healthy sales for these razor-sharp separates with recession-friendly price points.
2 June 2009
You will find Helmut Lang on Saks Fifth Avenue's new contemporary floor, but you won't find its designers, Nicole and Michael Colovos, on the party circuit. "We don't go out very much; we stay focused on our work," the duo said as they presented their Fall collection in their clean white studio. The clothes belied the Colovos' alleged homebody status. For starters, the designers took color inspiration from Marlene Dumas, the South African painter whose work was recently seen at MoMA. There were also on-trend pieces such as distressed denims (recalling the couple's personal and professional grunge phases), zippers galore, and plenty of cocoon-y toppers. These looks would cut a figure whether you're out on the town or staying closer to home.
18 February 2009
"A coming together of nature and the city," is how Nicole Colovos described the work she and her husband, Michael, did at Helmut Lang this season. Basically, it was a continuation of their exploration of organic shapes for Fall, only this time it was—in Colovos' words—"juxtaposed with architectural elements."Lang staples like sleek jackets were given a tuxedo cut and left sleeveless; trousers were slouchy in draped twill or silk, mostly with narrow cuffs. Oversize tees and tank dresses had moody black-and-white prints of marble, pumice stone, and—in a first collaboration for the brand—macabre spider designs by the British artist Jessica Albarn. One arresting material was a paper-thin leather with cobweb burnout used for jackets and dresses. This was a cohesive collection with enough casual cool to appeal to those who loved Lang back in the day and those who are just beginning to turn their eyes toward it since the brand's relaunch two years ago.
11 September 2008
Designers Michael and Nicole Colovos dove into Resort with a beach-worthy mix of basics that, they said, "focused on ease, proportion, and shape." Jellyfish were a prevalent theme—overtly reflected in patterns on stretchy silk tanks and more subtly as the silhouette inspiration behind fit-and-flare skirts. Jersey paneling on jackets and dresses drew the eye, wavelike, down the body. With pieces designed to be literally thrown on, rendered in a fresh palette of white, steel gray, and marine blue, the Colovoses captured the season's breezy attitude—albeit in their own streamlined way. Even minimalists, it seems, go on holiday.
28 May 2008
The re-launch of Helmut Lang, now owned by Link Theory Holdings, is as a contemporary—that is, more affordable—line, as opposed to a luxury one. Michael and Nicole Colovos, the founders of Habitual jeans, were tapped to get the job done some three years ago. For their first bona fide runway show, this week, Nicole said that she and her partner had decided to concentrate on "modern fabrics and architectural lines." In other words, they decided to stay true to the soul of the brand.The collection stuck to the script: Out came the requisite straps and harnesses; also, better-than-basic tanks for layering, sharp narrow pants, slick blazer jackets, and monochrome color schemes. Some of the fabrics looked high-tech but actually were made mostly of natural fibers, woven and coated in innovative ways (though some less-structured looks were made up in a taffeta that crinkled like a black plastic deli bag). A sleeveless hoodie in glazed leather nodded to Spring's active trend.The attitude was hard-edged, but not menacing. In fact, an asymmetrical pool blue dress with attached swag had romance to it. The minimalist palette of white, slate, black, and blue, was based, in part, on the Colovoses' study, Michael said, of ice and its different "colors, layers, structures, and forms." Cool enough…and the Colovoses are obviously warming to their assignment.
9 September 2007
The billowing white curtains hanging from the ceiling at the Helmut Lang label's new West Chelsea headquarters Thursday hinted at the minimalist-yet-warm tone of the clothes about to make their debut. After two promising capsule showings (spring and fall 2007), this was to be the brand's first "real collection," as a rep called it, since being acquired by Link Theory in the wake of its founding designer's departure. The results? Well, let's just say that the art and media types who've always favored the label won't need to abandon it just yet. Michael and Nicole Colovos's 23-look collection for spring 2008 echoed the eponymous Austrian's intellectually rigorous approach to fashion, while steering clear of slavish retread. The pieces clung to a minimal color palette of white, olive, and black, with a slightly softened silhouette (think voluminous hoods, extended shirts, drop crotches). As with the modern architecture the collection strove to evoke, the clothes' deconstructed detailing ranged from playful (including a cotton blazer with stealthy bomber-style pockets) to borderline pretentious (pointless asymmetry, a cardigan that buttoned up both front and back). Fabrics were an inviting mix of finely woven cottons, supple lambskin, and high tech (an oversized white Crombie constructed of aluminum-fortified "techno crunch"). And an elegantly-proportioned assortment of footwear continued the season's sandal trend, most memorably a strap-heavy leather pair that, er, toed the line between provocative and overwrought. "We're not trying to walk in [Lang's] footsteps at all," Michael said afterward. Maybe so, though it must be comforting to know the path's so well marked.
12 July 2007
Michael and Nicole Colovos' first resort collection for Helmut Lang added a welcome edge to a season often known for its saccharine prettiness. Working in graphic black and white, the designers respected the minimalism that is the house's heritage without being limited by it. Knits, skin-exposing cutouts, and layering added texture to straight, streamlined silhouettes as well as softer, rounded ones. A pair of narrow suits were the show's highlights.
25 June 2007
“It's just about optimal summer,” said a relaxed Helmut Lang backstage before his show. “You’ll see sailor elements, and ropes and knots. But you know, we’re never literal.” Right enough: The collection had a tangential relationship to nautical style, without going overboard.The first impression to come across was one of lightness—in the plain striped canvas ticking and shirting fabrics that Lang cut into jackets, belted coats, narrow pants, and shift dresses. Beyond that were his signature personal twists. A blue-and-white cotton shirt-striped dress came with a swooping neckline and a folded-back detail, buttoned like matelot pants in the skirt. Jackets were cut short, and shaped like a midshipman’s uniform—the best, in navy, had a sailor collar and was worn with a trailing asymmetric white jersey tank and chinos.And the ropes and knots? There were gorgeous platform espadrilles in tan, black, and white; twists and knots of fabric were worked into short dresses, suspended or draped across the body like abstract garlands; and evening decoration included string-and-pearl harnesses.True to the designer’s promise, nothing in this collection was overly themey. But elegance and simplicity are the strongest points of Lang’s aesthetic, and those are the qualities that looked most compelling in this collection.
5 October 2004
Around the same time as Helmut Lang came across an old book of fisherman's knots, Bill Murray asked him to design a suit with a pair of sailor pants that the star could wear at the Oscars. Presto! The inspiration was set for Lang's spring 2005 collection, a nautical jaunt that took in denims or summery seersucker suits encircled by white rope belts, raffia vests that looked like netting, and T-shirts with a rope print curled across the corner. Fishermen's sweaters were slashed open or, in some cases, left as a single coil of knit down the chest—one of the designer's signature "phantom" garments. As usual, Lang nimbly avoided letting his theme get away with him (with the possible exception of the goat-fur sailor clogs). A navy-and-white palette prevailed, save for one pair of utterly transparent jeans and another covered with a Swiss floral print. Wearability bonus points: The flat fronts of Lang's sailor pants (one pair done in cashmere, as per Murray's request) made for a flattering fit.
3 July 2004
The long-limbed stride of Helmut Lang's tribe is a uniquely confident forward march. From their elegant coats to the tips of their high stalking heels, his women go out to meet the real world with a conviction that leaves retro in the dust. For starters, theyre prepared for the weather (a consideration strangely overlooked in many of this season's lady-crazed collections). His deep-dyed shearlings in saturated blues and purples, some chopped short into multi-flapped shrugs, others cut as lean raw-edged coats, made an instant, powerful impact. Pragmatism with a personal, cultured background: Now, thats a beautiful sight in these days of skimpy fashion thinking.Lang didnt neglect to show that other item that's scarce on the ground this season: a mean-cut pair of the great skinny tux pants hes always done, now narrowed to meet high-cuffed drawstring suede or shearling ankle boots. If it's the perfect black trouser suit youre desperate for, hes your only man. And once daytime is dealt with, he has some of the most coolly brilliant options for evening, too—like a gorgeous, just-off-classic white satin trench and a shaggy cream goat-shearling coat belted with white satin. As sophisticated as these pieces are, they have an easy wearability that lifted this collection clear of the shredded, strap-manic complexity of some of Langs recent work.When you buy into Lang's aesthetic, however, you're also complicit with his subtly coded subtexts. That could be the white lace edge on the brim of a thigh-high leather boot, under a short black dress with a suggestive frill of white petticoat. "Sort of a bit like an Austrian waitress, no?" the designer laughed, afterward. Langs Mittel European roots also account for the pleated organza twisted onto evening gowns—from Hungarian folk costume, he said, just as the shaggy cream coat started life as a notion about Hungarian shepherd jackets. But none of these references were overt. Lang is too mature, and too sure of his touch, to resort to a one-note "inspiration," and this collection was as far from "folkloric" as imaginable. With its small details of delightfully irrational crazy-chic—like the pony-hair tail sprouting from the back of a pair of pumps—it qualified as a modernist high point of the season.
3 March 2004
Helmut Lang based his collection on dragonflies. What set him off, he said before the show, was “the lightness of structure, the iridescent color.” Whatever his references, they always become meshed into the recognizable House of Lang signatures: pared-away structures; straps; bits and pieces of T-shirts; and tailoring. That was all apparent in an opening section of layered beige and white, with delicate bandages loosely wrapping pants, and holey T-shirts under a few of his slim suits.Last season’s shadow of militaristic strictness and aggression has lifted. In place of the darkness, there are complex but abbreviated shapes and a concentration on working with color—brick red, beige, purple, and green, with sudden flashes of reflective materials and slithery, synthetic translucencies. Some of Lang’s abstracted forms have become far removed from any recognizable function. Odd hip-slung devices came with metallic protrusions on one side, tied on with jersey wraps. Other garments looked like upside-down sweaters, dangling in place of skirts.His best silhouettes were tiny, formfitting knit dresses with a contrasting underlayer of sheer, shiny fabric that escaped in miniscule gathered flips. In the end, though, for all the lightness and sensitivity of color in this collection, Lang’s imagination has drifted into obsessing over aesthetic details. In the old days, grown women used to cry over how his pants, tanks, jackets, and coats offered such coolly simple solutions for everyday dressing. Now, for all the vision of beauty he presents, there’s a sense that they’re left on the sidelines, pining.
8 October 2003
If bad times are a-coming, Helmut Lang is the man to outfit the brave. For fall he issued multifunctional layers for the urban warrior to strap on, carving everything to an athletic body line to help his army of followers stand tall in the face of geopolitical meltdown.Soft armor for the corsetry militia. Leggings done in cross-laced layers. Form-hugging felted coats and knits, cut and sliced in flaps to secure with Velcro and magnets. Jersey holsters, girdle skirts, gartered stockings, harnesses and sexy zones of stretch. If it all sounds a tad busy and tarty, trust Lang to douse things with the impeccable colors of austere chic. Using black with navy or gray, a touch of dusty pink and then transparencies of ecru and white for night, he made clothes that stalk a fine line between his signature obsessions and a clean new silhouette.Lang continued his splendid record of conviction for producing a covertly perverse luxury. The evidence included wedge-heeled boots, sometimes done in patent and trimmed with shearling; plissé chiffon chopped into minidresses; and leather stamped into a suggestion of high-tech military camouflage. His much-loved deluxe parkas and menswear coatings went missing from this Winter collection, but perhaps they’re being kept in the back now that so many have copied them. He certainly hasn’t abandoned his minimalism-with-a-gorgeous-kick: when he sent out Natalia Vodianova wearing a men’s shirt, skinny sweater and plain short skirt with a fringe of goat fur swinging from the front, his fans all but fainted.
6 March 2003
After five years in New York, Helmut Lang returned to the same white space in Paris where he has sent out some of his finest collections—designs that changed the face of fashion. The atmosphere at the spring show was charged with nostalgia and anticipation. Would he hit those highs again?The collection he showed was a case of revisiting the roots of his genre: layered T-shirt dressing, skinny pants, signature slim overcoats, abstracted prints, punky materials recontextualized. But time has passed. Since Lang has been in New York, his once raw, plugged-in connection to underground sources has been replaced by a quest for sophistication, expressed in abstract detailing and luxe materials. So the coats and pants got inserts or sleeves constructed of mesh, chiffon and leather. The T-shirts were often reduced to complex traceries of string. And there was cool white-beaded eveningwear, as a zippered dress or fragile jacket, intended to shine on a red carpet somewhere.The change had to happen: as Lang well understands, minimalism is over, and his followers, like he is, are moving on. But that doesn't mean that they can't still be seduced by the designer's classic codes. Latex, bound and pieced into garments, hit just the right buttons, particularly in a pristine yellow-and-white-printed dress with a flip of the white stuff as its skirt.
3 October 2002
Helmut Lang’s minimal take on power dressing has become a de facto uniform for the artsy executive set—the kind of customers who need to look cool but serious while hopping time zones and board meetings. His Fall collection, done primarily in black and white, is sure to keep them happy.Lang always cuts a mean jacket, and this season’s version has a slightly built-up shoulder and narrower waist, in keeping with the changing silhouette. (He kept the pants long and lean.) Hoods were in plentiful supply, some on his well-known narrow-fitting coats and others on soft, oversized sweaters. Slashed and layered jersey pieces, meanwhile, added a tougher edge to the looks. The best group was a series of intricately twisted takes on fishermen’s sweaters, with oversized cables and random slashes, done in black or white chunky wool.A lot of the collection felt familiar, and there were some odd pieces, like metallic pleated skirts, that might not fly past the occasional gallery opening. But Lang’s more straightforward looks will certainly satisfy his loyal following.
13 February 2002
Mixing romanticism, sex, and science, Helmut Lang's Spring 2002 collection balanced flesh-baring cutouts and bondage-style harnesses with Great Gatsby-style femininity.Lang played hard and soft off against each other throughout the show. Strappy body suits were worn under flapper-like dresses or paired with pleated skirts; patent and metallic leather mingled with soft, sensual materials including silk chiffon and even perch skin. The angular geometry of pleats, v-necks and mirrored minaudières, meanwhile, was countered by rounder, arched necklines and open-toed shoes.Lang added vibrancy to a severe palette of black, white and gray via dashes of deep red and purple, as well as prints designed in-house. One of these featured wings; another, though it resembled leopard spots, was in fact a rendering of biological cells.Originally scheduled to be shown on the catwalk in Paris, Lang's collection is instead being presented via the Internet, CD-ROM, lookbooks and showtapes (echoing the designer's successful alternative show format of 1998). "I am sure that everybody will understand that I have to be in New York right now," Lang says. "Presenting the Helmut Lang collection here is our way of supporting business in New York."
7 October 2001
Die-hard fans of sleek power dressing will find plenty of sharp, no-nonsense basics at Helmut Lang come Fall. After Spring’s sex-driven tour de force, the Austrian designer has gone for a more sober approach, referencing some of his own early work in the process.Lang’s mostly black collection revolved around many of his well-known classics: Fitted blazers, narrow trousers and sharp-edged coats continue to work as a modern urban uniform. Lang added some eye-catching touches like plush fur linings on overcoats, policeman-like holsters that curled around the shoulder on empire slips and beaded detailing that peeked out from the edge of liquid tops. Other highlights included sexy, off-kilter after-five dresses with only one sleeve and see-through tulle overlays.Lang also showed several muted leopard-print suits and skimpy satin dresses with puzzling circular breast pads, but the more straightforward looks were far more commanding.
14 February 2001
Helmut Lang's show began innocently enough, his trademark sleek trousers, body-conscious tops and functional overcoats redone for Spring in nubby silk-knit burlap. The looks were pure Helmut: functional, urban and modern. But then, gradually, a wave of sexual innuendo began to escalate. A tape-like strap was strategically placed on a semitransparent top; a bikini bottom was paired with a deep-plunging tank. Finally, a procession of crisscrossed, bondage-inspired dresses and tops whizzed through the audience. Lang, the designer who pioneered androgynous, uniform dressing, had designed a brilliant collection that could go from a Tribeca loft cocktail party to an alleyway midnight rendezvous west of Times Square.Many of Lang's I-didn't-mean-to-turn-you-on minidresses referenced Azzedine Alaïa, whose influence can be seen just about everywhere these days. But, as always, Lang made the look his own. Slim trousers featured circular cutouts on the side; leather coats and dresses were perversely punched with holes, giving them an intimidating, gothic feel. Not quite ready to walk into the office wearing full-on dominatrix garb? Not to worry—you'll still find plenty of Lang's reliable basics to choose from.
20 September 2000
Urban and modern are synonymous with Helmut Lang, and with good reason. This season, while most designers scamper to redefine yet another bygone era or perfectly distill the trend of the moment, Lang took time out to create sharp, clean and timeless clothes. That is not to say that there were no references involved; Balenciaga certainly was an influence for the fitted tops and jackets, bell-shaped skirts and exquisitely voluminous dresses that dominated his runway. But Lang has too fine a sense of his own aesthetic for his designs ever to appear derivative. The ease of the silhouette, and the signature color palette—shades of basic tones with occasional shocks of color—were all his own. As if to stress the validity and timelessness of his practical philosophy, Lang made sure to open the show with his most recognizable classics—super-sharp pants and suits, street-smart coats and transparent tops. The results, especially in contrast with the gratuitous ornamentation often seen elsewhere, were more gratifying than ever.
9 February 2000
Lang played with tailoring and flouthroughout this collection, and sometimes within a single outfit. Erin O’Connor, for example, wore jeans and a single-breasted topper from which floated a sheer panel. Shorts and sleeveless dresses had balloon hems, and feathers sprouted from heels of shoes. Bombshell Stephanie Seymour looked every inch the lady in a short and stunning off-the-shoulder dress.
27 September 1999
How to dress for a new century? By investing in an urban wardrobe with armor-like elements (leather, padding) and adding touches of NASA-y silver to designs suited for modern clothes. Shearlings added warmth (literal and figural) to the outing, and coats that could be hung on the shoulders with backpack-style straps took on the aspect of wings. The collection soared.
25 February 1999
Pops of fuchsia and silver enlivened this otherwise mostly black and “cyberwhite” (asVoguetermed it) collection featuring quilted motorcycle pants, some in shiny silver; lots of sheer layers; and accessories-vetements (as they were known in-house) in the form of padded arm holsters. One tailored topper had streamers, and the finale pants were embellished with a poetic back “bustle” of long feathers.
30 September 1998
Fashion is in a state of flux. Whether the system is broken or whether patience has gone the way of the horse-drawn carriage can be debated. What’s clear is that the global reach and immediacy of the digital world has increased awareness of and desire for fashion. It has also shown up the lag time between presentation and fulfillment, which can run up to six months later. In a see-it-want-it-now world, that might as well be eons. While there’s no consensus yet as to how the situation can be fixed,Vetements,Burberry, andTom Fordwill break with the current system going forward.So is the upcomingFall 2016 seasonthe last as we’ve known them? Or rather, as we’ve known them since the Fall 1998 season, when modernistHelmut Lang, perhaps the most emulated designer among the new gen, turned the system, successfully, on its head using technology to democratize the experience of seeing his collection? (A season later, Lang would move his live runway show from Paris to New York; he is the reason the season starts in the U.S. rather than it once had, in Europe.)For Lang, this was much more than the mere flip of a calendar page. The presentation of his Fall 1998 collection on the Internet was part of his inclusive, forward-thinking, and technology-friendly philosophy. And it made sense in terms of his aesthetic, too: It wasn’t a stretch to think that a designer who embraced minimalism and tech fabrics and who had long incorporated elements of workwear into his garments would be tech-savvy. The same could not be said of the fashion world at the time.So how did it all come about? We reached out to the designer turned fine artist, who explained via email:“This was at the moment when I moved my company from Europe to the United States. As I was preparing for our next‘séance de travail,’which was highly anticipated, I felt that it was in many ways a new beginning for me, and also a new beginning for how to communicate my work. I sensed at the time that the Internet would grow into something much bigger than imaginable, so I thought it was the right moment to challenge the norm and present the collection online. It was a shock to the system, but a beginning of the new normal. In terms of the broader context of the industry, we made in the same season the entire collection available on a public platform, allowing consumers for the first time to get an unfiltered view of my work.
”Today, in homage to Lang’s brilliant move, we present on Vogue Runway his timeless Fall 1998 show in its entirely. We asked Kirsten Owen, the designer’s muse, to share her memories of the collection. “If I can quote Juergen Teller,” she replied, “ ‘It was more of a smell than a memory, of raw concrete and hi-fi. Definitely a buzz.’ ” Generating this excitement was Lang’s masterful balance of tailoring and flou, neon brights and neutrals, and the unexpected touch (bunny ears) that made this first virtual show as sartorially memorable as it was historically important.
9 February 2016
Among the sharply tailored suits, destined for creative offices,Helmut Langoffered plenty of options for casualwear, including khaki-colored denim, paint-splattered jeans, mesh tops, and over-vests like modern armor.
5 September 1997
Minimalism, boring? Not inHelmut Lang’shands. Take the Austrian designer’s fall collection of 1994, the star of which was a sleeveless shift almost elementary in its shape, but in a raspberry pink latex as shiny as a candy wrapper imprinted with lace. It’s 20 years later and that simple but decidedly not plain little dress hasn’t aged a day. Lang retired in January 2005, a few months after Prada bought the remainder of his company (he sold the first 51 percent in 1999), but it’s no wonder his work remains a touchstone for fashion’s most influential designers.
1 March 1994