Alyx (Q7704)
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Alyx is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Alyx |
Alyx is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
Last we heard of Matthew M. Williams, back in December, the American designer had just announced his departure from Givenchy following the thought-provoking (if less headline-making) news that he had secured an investment deal for his Alyx label with Adrian Cheng, the Hong Kong–based entrepreneur. This week, quietly and intimately hosting previews in his Paris apartment, Williams revealed exactly what the new Alyx will look like moving forward.The designer and Cheng, now the label’s majority owner, outlined their plans to accelerate the label’s growth. They spoke of freestanding stores, betting on DTC channels, and maximizing drops with pop-ups and other events. They moved the label’s headquarters away from Italy, which had been a crucial part of its storytelling as this “American designer making luxury items in Italy,” to Paris, where Williams has been based since he took the job at Givenchy. But they hadn’t explained how exactly they’d reshape Alyx’s product until now. “We’ve had a really great reaction to the collection, especially because we really brought down the prices this season from the past decade,” said Williams.The new Alyx is significantly more accessible than it had been historically. A sweatshirt came down from $600 to around $250, a leather jacket from $3,000 to $900, and the denim from $700 to $450. “These kinds of prices allow more stores to buy deeper and kids to be able to purchase the brand, which is great,” said Williams. “Hence why the collection is smaller than normal; it’s a transition.”A transition because, as Williams said, he was used to working with “the most expensive fabrics and suppliers in the world in Italy.” Now he’s been striving to offer a similar level of product but using a different supply chain. “It’s a different way of making clothing than I’ve done in the past decade,” he said. When asked if there was a takeaway from this exercise, he continued: “Every single season is a new challenge, and it’s never easy. I can’t synthesize it into one takeaway.”It makes sense for Williams to make Alyx more accessible, and one wonders why he hadn’t done this before. He has a legion of fans currently obsessing over this drop in his Instagram comments.
They are who this is for, after all: “We don’t need another brand that’s just grinding every penny out of the customer and the environment, and all these clothes that are just about having beautiful models with the propaganda of logos around the world; that’s not why I started doing fashion,” he said. “I like to think there are people who notice that and connect with the brand, because it actually means something and it’s personal and it’s connected to culture in a real way, because sometimes when you get in these big corporations, it’s like they’re not even aware of that; it’s just an Excel sheet on the computer.”Williams has streamlined his collection’s proportions and is starting fresh with a line of Alyx essentials: a slim, high-break tailored jacket (one of the main tailoring stories of this men’s season), a lightly down-filled gilet, roomy short-sleeve button-downs, and a nice pair of jeans in a classic soft wash. These are the building blocks for Williams’s next act, made exclusively for those who care.
23 June 2024
Before this show began, many in the Alyx audience were content to down the white wine and hatch plans for the after-party. Many others wondered if it would ever start. After 45 minutes the speaker stacks out in Via Ventura rumbled to life. Out came tailored peak lapel jackets and a topcoat in black, or black and brown, both with angled, popper-fastened cargo pockets at the tricep and chain-edged collars. Grommeted, zip-up, raw-edged sleeveless jackets in treated canvas featured matte relief crossbar-free “A” logos that were repeated on the breast of Matthew M. Williams’s favorite-cut button up shirt. Worn with similarly crisp white cotton pants, this created a sensei vibe Williams said he could get behind.This crisp look was the first to feature a dainty ballet-slipper shoe style with a new enclosed variation of the FiveFingers sole Williams said he and his team had developed in partnership with Vibram. They seemed all the daintier in contrast to the business as usual mega molded sole boots, this time presented with original (and therefore Australian) Ugg-length low-calf uppers that came in a mix of finishes, including leopard.In the second half of the show these big boots were presented with four or five variations of a capri-esque pant, which, despite its chichi (but also schlumpy) associations, worked well. If you scrunched up your mental eye a little, there was something a little postindustrial-punk pant about them. And like them or not, it was fun to see a queasily unfamiliar combination—inspired by a Wolfgang Tillmans photograph entitledGedser—in a collection that Williams said he’d styled himself. He elaborated: “I just wanted it to be very pure. Just like looks that I would wear. Very direct, not over-styled, and immediate.”Treated multipocket shorts, liner gilets, and oversized jackets with rollercoaster buckles—all of them in leather—were also part of the narrative. What looked like greasy-effect denim was cut into full volumed separates. Full-armed canvas sweatshirts and a false tee-sleeve over long-sleeve top worn with those comely capris made for new tracksuit silhouettes. Williams and his longtime design director Lee Roach fashioned a subtly distorted spring wardrobe of false-flag work-to-street-to-eveningwear staples tonight.
16 June 2023
“I do see the man and the woman hanging out,” said Matthew Williams as we looked at this womenswear follow-up to January’s menswear show. He continued: “The beautiful thing about Alyx is that the history of the brand is being written every day in real time. It’s like a personal monologue. What I was interested in at 27 when I started the brand, it’s evolved a lot, now that I’m 37 and that’s okay. It’s not that we need to make clothes for club kids, which is something I was probably more interested in when I started out.”Nonetheless, you could see some of these looks killing it in the club, alongside the Alyx man or not. These included the dog-collar stud neck distressed-hem dresses at the start and finish, the slip dress in a print from the carry-over Mark Flood artist collaboration, plus the gathered-neck metal mesh top (with pink distressed denim shorts ) and minidress. Equally you could place William’s Alyx women in more genteel contemporary scenarios— gallery openings, creative meetings, bank robberies and the like—in his jewel detailed, satin revered, rough-edged tailoring, rib knit dresses, and studded knee leather pants and shearlings.The treated lace on draped pants and tops was another reference to Flood’s lace paintings, and its delicate discord countered nicely against the harder turmoil in leathers that had been carefully dyed, washed, printed, and then burned to create multi-layered depth. The silver rabbit hardware was also Flood-sourced, based on a painting of melted, mixing Easter bunnies. The cowboy boots, some Flood-printed, others plainer, had their leather toes sliced open to reveal uncompromising steel caps beneath. There were two new bags, the unisex Payton and the feminocentric Raya, both of which came in Flood prints and various vegan and non-vegan fabrications.Williams, both through parsing these last two Alyx collections and keeping an eye on his wider activities, appears to be entering a fresh and progressively galvanized phase of design. He said: “I want to allow the brand to mature and grow and evolve with my tastes and life: It is such a personal project.”
9 March 2023
“YES YES BLAH BLAH BLAH YAWN.” So was inscribed the canvas by Houston’s Mark Flood, boldly installed directly opposite the section of runway by which your correspondent was standing during this all-standing Alyx show. Yet this was anything but meh. Flood, 72, is the subject of an exhibition that will be hung in the Studio Maiocchi showspace for some time hence, and which also provided much of the decoration—not all of it surface-borne—in this collection. More arch Flood signage (STAR on the front, DUM on the back) plus angry bootlegged Big Tobacco graphics were presented on the canvas of cleverly layered garment dyed sweats and distressed leathers. More intimately, colored and distressed lace that echoed the framing on some Flood paintings was rematerialized into real lace and insinuated as a treated, ripped then repaired layer on womenswear dresses—for next month's collection reveal—and in pants.Matthew Williams upgraded his slightly severe, tech-goth aesthetic—a no-brainer if anyone ever greenlights the Neuromancer movie—with new luxury versions of modular mole portage, de-gendered moto mid layers and stacked and distressed work boots. Top coats with box cut satin peaked lapels were worn over S.W.A.T. flavored combat pants to create post-apocalypse tuxedos. Floating sheaths of technical material swathed shell-shouldered jackets that signaled strength and movement.Williams sticks to the refrain that he just makes clothes that he wants to wear. The five-deep audience, plus the after-party crowd straining outside, suggested that he remains an avatar of broader interests. Williams’ narrative is no fashion bildungsroman—it’s much more complex, with layers as wrought and unobvious as his artisan-distressed pieces. Such is its fascination for those who follow it.
13 January 2023
As Matthew Williams said straight-up straight afterwards, the derelict Franco Scarioni swimming pool was an appropriate venue because: “there’s a lot of skin in the dresses.” Not to mention the womenswear one-pieces and—in the noble spirit of equal opportunities skin-baring—an entirely equitable proportion of sheer knits, midriff-flashing hoodie scarves, and pants-only looks for men.Another great reason to be here, al fresco, was that Williams felt super-comfortable—given especially that Covid rates are rising again—in inviting a much larger crowd than got to see last season’s first live Milan Alyx show. These included Chito—who sprayed the poolside in what Williams said was a surprise to him—plus 24kGoldn, gmoney, Remo Ruffini, Lucas Jagger (who came straight from Dsquared2), M24, and Martine Rose.Wait, what, Martine Rose? Increasingly, watching shows this season feels like watching those Marvel movies that led up toAvengers: Endgame—except that instead of the MCU it is the LVFU (Louis Vuitton Fashion Universe) that keeps dropping storyboarded Easter Eggs and unexpected cut-scene adjacencies in order to preface a climax to come. And to then consider that both Williams tonight and Rose a few days ago used their runways to tease new Nike collabs? We’re in serious Den of (Fashion) Geek territory.But anyway: as standalone episodes, Alyx shows now echo against the work he is doing at Givenchy—the top-tier LVMH Parisian franchise he scored thanks to much sterling work for Alyx in Milan in partnership with Luca Benini’s Slam Jam from 2015. The timing of that Givenchy appointment in June 2020 meant he could not show his work live until last October, which rather sucked the oxygen of impact from his arrival. This makes it easy to forget—and how so very quickly we do forget—the centrality and influence of Williams to the hype-heavy chest-rig and industrial hardware tactical-chic menswear moment that proved so prevalent around five years ago.Such was their power that these motifs quickly became absorbed into the decorative lexicons of other, bigger houses—often through collaboration with Williams himself. Looking at today’s poolside Alyx it was interesting to consider—once you moved on from the skin—how comprehensively Williams has taken them out of his runway window (although there are plenty of roller coaster buckle belts available on the Alyx e-store).
Instead there were subtler details such as the origami pockets that featured in the tailoring in Alyx’s first standalone Paris show, here transferred to denim. The penultimate organza Big Bird minidress looked out of place in the rundown context, but would surely live happily within Givenchy’s long-mooted—but apparently deferred—Williams couture debut. Armless, raw-edged minimalist tailoring, long-hem moto leathers, zip-deconstructed jersey pieces, and a series of drawstring ruched minidresses were further evidence of Willams’ undoubted range and talent.
17 June 2022
Above us a drone whined, twisted, and whirred, its rotors producing enough updraft to blow strands of the ostrich feather collars worn by some models up to adhere on their lips. At our feet another drone, this one on wheels, clinked and clanked as it forwarded and reversed to ensure the shots allowed for lingering glances at the split-toe contra-color womenswear heels and the Mono boot, a bulky but contoured EVA foam puddleboot that was an update of a similar piece first launched a few seasons back. The models walked to a slow burning, snare-rattled beat by F1lthy, who had put an original composition together after receiving images of this show venue, a decadently-decorated but near-derelict church on the edge of town named Saint Victor and the Forty Martyrs.There were just 70 of us in the congregation for the first show by Matthew Williams’s brand—full name 1017 Alyx 9SM—in Italy. It was something of a homecoming for a label that was founded by Williams in Ferrara back in 2015, in partnership with Slam Jam’s Luca Benini, before the design studio was moved to Milan two years later. Despite that, all its pre-pandemic shows were in Paris. “But Milan has been our home for that time, and now we're here to stay, which is cool,” said Williams.The collection was consistent with those past Parisian promenades in the striking contrast between its masculine and feminine silhouettes. Those in the menswear, including the musician Destroy Lonely, wore layered stratae of sheepskin or puffer over technical midlayers or volumized knits and PVC pants, sometimes alongside short over pant layering, placed against long topcoats with bulkily bolstered shoulders, all making for an exaggeratedly weighty and visually protective carapace. For those in the womenswear, dresses cut away below the bust served as capes over hip-skimming pants, full-length dresses were edged in crystalline mesh, and fitted monocolor pant and baselayer combos in fuchsia and red were ruched at the shoulder via trademark Alyx hardware.Thinking of the long gap between Alyx’s last show and this one, we wondered if Willams had processed any input from clients about their evolving tastes. He replied: “I wish I had more time to spend with the clientele and understand them a little bit better, but I honestly just make clothes that I feel are desirable. So maybe it sounds selfish or narcissistic, but I’m just making things that I like, and hopefully other people will like them too. That’s just how I move.”
14 January 2022
There’s been a sense of sci-fi to the post-pandemic beach scenarios staged by brands this season, which the 1017 Alyx 9SM film captured well. Shot by Jordan Hemingway through the blurry 1970s warmth of 16mm film, but on the Mars-like, black volcanic beaches of Stromboli, the idea of the beach felt at once foreign and nostalgic. Add the type of clothes Matthew Williams designs—futuristic textures, alien sculpting, clinical vibes—and the Alyx experience easily embodied our reemergent mindset.For those trapped in cities for so long, the holiday scenes we used to take for granted now look like something out ofAvatar. “It reminds you how powerful nature is,” the designer said of the lava island. “We were fitting the collection in Milan, and someone from the studio was like, ‘This collection would be so beautiful on black sand beaches,’” he recalled, on a video call from his Paris apartment.Williams has been frequenting the Aeolian islands for years. Panarea is his haunt, but he was more than familiar with the otherworldly landscapes of Stromboli, and the inimitable sunset immortalized in his film. “It’s a sunrise and a sunset: a new beginning for us as a brand, as an industry, the world. It’s progression and succession, and that’s what I’m feeling right now.”Observing the “evolution over revolution” concept he employs at Alyx, Williams approached his new beginning by going back to his brand’s roots, refining and finessing the silhouettes, textures and hardware that epitomize it. The garment dyes and surface effects he works into his streetwear came out reminiscent of things you might see in a volcanic landscape, while lighter cap metal branding featured throughout the collection set Alyx’s industrial character in stone.But for all the protective attributes those ideas had to offer a post-pandemic dress sense, it was the softness of draped dresses with twist and knot details that felt most sensitive to our reemergent mentality. Perhaps we’re seeing a softer side to Williams after the Great Reset? The vegetable garden he’s been growing on his sprawling Paris terrace would suggest so. “I’m so into my vegetable garden,” he effused. “I got strawberries going, romaine, cabbage, tomatoes, sweet potato… I harvest them with my kids when they’re here, and we cook in the kitchen.”At Alyx, Williams is amping up those artisanal values, too. A series of dresses covered in thousands of hand-embroidered glass tube beads weren’t just for show, but will be made to order.
In recent seasons, similar pieces have been offered online, and Williams detected a demand.Asked if it’s an effect of his current tenure at Givenchy, he said it goes both ways. “There’s a group of people who love what I do at Alyx, who now love what I do at Givenchy. And there are new supporters from Givenchy that now are aware of Alyx. In general, as a brand—and when you’re starting to provide one-off pieces that are tens of thousands of euros—that confidence is gonna exist for many years to come.”
27 June 2021
Imbuing conventional dress codes with progressive values is, unsurprisingly, a big theme this men’s season. The social unrest of 2020 has made houses from Louis Vuitton to Hermès think beyond the surface of change. Now, fashion wants to change the meaning of its own codes entirely, and promote freedom of identity. As a drop in the new bloodline of designers flowing through the veins of the industry, Matthew Williams speaks that language. His co-ed collection for 1017 Alyx 9SM (say it ten times fast) continued his free game of mixing and matching the codes of traditional wardrobes through the fabrication-centric approach that defines his work.It’s an ongoing fortification of brand identity that never strays off focus. Even Williams’ show notes reflected it. Devoid of traditional spiels on inspiration, they offered instead a list of fabric and hardware developments and new accessories. “Alyx always keeps evolving the same silhouette and the same materials. The hardware is consistent,” the designer said on a video call from his sprawling apartment in Paris, a panoramic city view behind him. “It’s a stripping-back to where we began, and defining those codes again, and making them more consistent and solid. Because we weren’t doing a show, we wanted to reduce it down to exactly what was needed.”The pictures he released in place of his usual runway presentation showed a collage of twisted classics: massive teddy coats, super elongated denim jackets, various shape-shifting takes on puffers and parkas, body-con dresses, and suits developed by Caruso. Add the industrial buckle accessories Williams excels in, and the ‘ugly cool’ EVA-soled slides and mules adored by Gen Z superstars, and you’ve pretty much ticked every box on the young social media-fueled trend list. “Women’s materials are stretch, knitwear is cosy, shoes can just be slipped on. But you still feel ‘dressed’. It’s effortless,” he said, echoing the generational dressing mentality that created those trends in the first place. When the Alyx customer emerges from a year of confinement, the demand for that kind of comfort-wear will only be stronger.What Williams does is part of a fashion revolution that isn’t going anywhere. Nearly two seasons into his artistic director job in the hallowed halls of Givenchy, that’s a fact. His fabrication-focused design methodology challenges the popular notion that his generation of designers is about creative direction rather than technical merit.
Yet with his rapidly growing global platforms (next to Alyx and Givenchy, he also works with Moncler and Nike), if he wants to, Williams now has the superstructure to explore a more thematic approach; not necessarily a ‘reference’, but a big statement beyond the borders of materials. As far as his own evolution goes, it could be the natural next step.
24 January 2021
Imbuing conventional dress codes with progressive values is, unsurprisingly, a big theme this men’s season. The social unrest of 2020 has made houses from Louis Vuitton to Hermès think beyond the surface of change. Now, fashion wants to change the meaning of its own codes entirely, and promote freedom of identity. As a drop in the new bloodline of designers flowing through the veins of the industry, Matthew Williams speaks that language. His co-ed collection for 1017 Alyx 9SM (say it ten times fast) continued his free game of mixing and matching the codes of traditional wardrobes through the fabrication-centric approach that defines his work.It’s an ongoing fortification of brand identity that never strays off focus. Even Williams’ show notes reflected it. Devoid of traditional spiels on inspiration, they offered instead a list of fabric and hardware developments and new accessories. “Alyx always keeps evolving the same silhouette and the same materials. The hardware is consistent,” the designer said on a video call from his sprawling apartment in Paris, a panoramic city view behind him. “It’s a stripping-back to where we began, and defining those codes again, and making them more consistent and solid. Because we weren’t doing a show, we wanted to reduce it down to exactly what was needed.”The pictures he released in place of his usual runway presentation showed a collage of twisted classics: massive teddy coats, super elongated denim jackets, various shape-shifting takes on puffers and parkas, body-con dresses, and suits developed by Caruso. Add the industrial buckle accessories Williams excels in, and the ‘ugly cool’ EVA-soled slides and mules adored by Gen Z superstars, and you’ve pretty much ticked every box on the young social media-fueled trend list. “Women’s materials are stretch, knitwear is cosy, shoes can just be slipped on. But you still feel ‘dressed’. It’s effortless,” he said, echoing the generational dressing mentality that created those trends in the first place. When the Alyx customer emerges from a year of confinement, the demand for that kind of comfort-wear will only be stronger.What Williams does is part of a fashion revolution that isn’t going anywhere. Nearly two seasons into his artistic director job in the hallowed halls of Givenchy, that’s a fact. His fabrication-focused design methodology challenges the popular notion that his generation of designers is about creative direction rather than technical merit.
Yet with his rapidly growing global platforms (next to Alyx and Givenchy, he also works with Moncler and Nike), if he wants to, Williams now has the superstructure to explore a more thematic approach; not necessarily a ‘reference’, but a big statement beyond the borders of materials. As far as his own evolution goes, it could be the natural next step.
24 January 2021
Before Matthew Williams’s appointment as the artistic director of Givenchy this spring, headlines about the American designer mostly had to do with the tactical pieces he designs for his own brand Alyx. Williams is partially responsible for the proliferation of the chest rig in 2018, and single handedly made a rollercoaster beck buckle a must-have item of the late 2010s. Despite the fact that Alyx started as a womenswear brand in 2015, it was Williams’s menswear innovations that got all the praise. In this, the fashion world did a bit of a disservice to Williams and his talent. As his spring 2021 collection shows, his sensitivity to bias cuts and embellishments, and his ability to finesse a silhouette align him more with the expressive world of womenswear than the hardcore energy of menswear.This collection, which combines both men’s and women’s pieces, is one of his most exciting at Alyx so far—a fact that is helped by the intimate lookbook images by Toyin Ibidapo. Much of the stiffness or strictness associated with his early work has been cut away, with jackets pared down to their most essential shapes and slip dresses constituting the majority of the womenswear offering. A twisting motif started in fall 2020 continues here as a silken overlay on a tank and evolves into a dress that looks as though a men’s shirt is wrapped around its bust. It’s something women will appreciate: elegant above the sternum and comfortable below the waist. Lace-trimmed skirts and tops with cinched leather busts round out the women’s-specific offering.Williams shows an obsessive attention to detail with his menswear and genderless pieces, the highlights of which are the completely studded jackets and slim trousers, made from semilune hand-applied studs. Williams estimates that about 12,000 studs go into each piece, each of which requires six days of labor to produce. Equally compelling are the embroidered studs seen on a monochromatic pair of trousers. Artisans work up the embroidery into pyramidal shapes for three days, resulting in a textured finish. Sort of like couture? “Although couture can only be made in Paris, I appreciate the compliment,” he says.The embellishments and embroideries are an extension of Williams’s growing interest in material development. The leather in this collection is specially treated with a resin finish for high shine. A new sneaker is 100% EVA polymer, sort of like a foam runner, while another is a mix of graduated perforated leathers.
A faux snakeskin is pattern-matched from bandana to boot, and puffas are ultra slim with geometric cap sleeves hammered on with studs.One piece Williams is especially proud of—he notes that this collection was designed before COVID-19 lockdowns and nothing was changed as it went into production—is a short-sleeved shirt jacket, a kind of throw-on-and-go solution for men between the formality of a suit and the casualness of a camp shirt. Shoppers will like this, for sure, but they may like his new leather trench and trousers more. Alyx’s buckles have been removed and replaced with a new slim metal bar to dart the waist of the jacket and calf of the pant. The pieces are roomier and simpler than the strapped and cinched looks of early Alyx. Soft, elegant, considered. Though he says he is keeping Alyx and Givenchy as separate as Milan and Paris, this all bodes well for his debut.
10 September 2020