Steven Alan (Q9223)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Steven Alan is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Steven Alan |
Steven Alan is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Many designers will tell you that regardless of fashion’s current mood or trends, the ’70s will always be a main source of inspiration. A few years ago, the ’70s were the trend—every Vogue Runway slideshow felt like a steady stream of bell-bottoms, wide-collar shirts, and hippieish paisleys. But that decade also laid the groundwork for what we now consider to be American staples: cool jackets, button-downs, and lots of denim.In that vein, Steven Alan’s collections have always had a ’70s tilt—crisp but easy shirting is one of his signatures, along with jeans, jumpsuits, and a general tomboyish vibe. For Fall ’17, he added a little Patti Smith circa 1975 to the mix; he was particularly interested in the way she wore men’s shirts in her heyday. Alan’s button-downs came in deep wallpaper florals or plaids, and had a boxy, slightly oversize fit. Another silk blouse with a bow at the neck channeled Smith’s skinny scarf on the cover of herHorsesalbum. There were silk shirtdresses, too, and Alan transformed a striped pajama shirt into a full-on jumpsuit.Other highlights included crinkled, “permanent pleat” tops and dresses; heathered knits; and outsize coats with the rounded, slightly too-wide shoulders we saw on many Fall ’17 runways. Girls who aren’t into that XL look will gravitate toward Alan’s nubby fleece jackets, which looked destined for a trip to the Catskills.
10 May 2017
America’s great. Sure, we’ve got our problems, but if you’ve ever had the chance to meditate on the waves lapping the rocks at Big Sur, or race a car down I-40 against the clouds rolling through the endless skies of the Southwest, or shrink before the sheer volume of the generators at Hoover Dam, then you’ve undoubtedly felt yourself in the grips of that Emersonian sense of America’s grandeur and possibility. This place is huge. And full of wonders. This season’s Steven Alan collection was intended as a wardrobe for road trippers moving through America’s West. The vibe was footloose.The theme was reflected both in the collection’s durability and its detail-driven intimacy. Alan’s go-to look was a jumpsuit, in a fabric with an unexpected hand, like cotton drill. Other throw-on pieces included breezy dresses and smock tops and lightweight sweaters boasting just the right mix of trimness and slouch. The little sweaters, knit in Peru, of a washed linen yarn were a soft-spoken highlight here; indeed, the fabrications deserved credit for much of the collection’s charm. There were also dozens of little details that gave these otherwise simple looks snap, like the bit of selvedge edging on a top, or folksy elements such as embroidery or smocking. You might think of Alan’s collection in terms of an Instagram feed of a trip: These were items made for the woman posting not selfies, but photos of the landscape she’s set out to explore.
7 November 2016
Steven Alanis a designer of the gradualist school, evolving the look of his growing brand piece by piece, detail by detail. His collections communicate a vibe, rather than articulating a concept. This season, however, Alan endeavored to wrap his arms around a clear theme: Inspired by the new Whitney Museum downtown, he latched onto the smudged palette typical of Abstract Expressionist painters and, by extension, riffed on their mid-century Greenwich Village–bohemian look. It wasn’t a daring concept, but it made for an easy fit with the Steven Alan vernacular. After all, Alan built his brand by appealing to city dwellers whose aesthetic is tinted by nostalgia for bygone urban bohemia. He’s in the process of cornering the market on the rumpled preppy look.This time out, the prep was dialed down to make way for artist-inspired smock shapes and garments that nodded at classic workwear, such as jumpsuits, cargo pants, and dungarees. There was a nice sense of proportion here—offbeat enough to be surprising, but nevertheless tuned to feminine curves—while the palette played a similar trick, evading expectation by trading in standard-issue autumn colors such as rust and burgundy for ones just a couple of ticks up or down the Pantone chart. Shoppers will also be won over by Alan’s choice selection of fabrics, the most special of which was a fuzzy wool plaid used in a cool, cropped pantsuit. If there was one standout item here, though, it had to be the shearling jacket with graphic black trim. That’s just the kind of durable, throw-on dud Helen Frankenthaler might have appreciated, back in the day. Women seeking to recapture her spirit will be happy to wear it over pretty much anything, now.
10 February 2016
Jeans!Steven Alanhas dabbled in denim before now, but his latest menswear collection marked his first heartfelt foray into that hotly contested market. Alan’s denim came in natural blue and over-dyed and bleached so pale it almost—almost—looked acid-washed. And, as an added grace note for all the denim nerds out there, his relaxed jeans and boxy jackets were sourced, soup-to-nuts, from Japan. The Steven Alan clientele will be psyched. Alan knows his customer well.The new denim was part of a larger story here—one inspired by Alan’s visits to the new Whitney Museum downtown and his re-appreciation of Abstract Expressionist canvases and, by extension, the men who painted them. At an appointment today, Alan said that he wanted to make clothes “a guy could work all night in,” and with that in mind, he erred his collection toward shapes with a worn-in sense of ease and materials, such as the moleskin he used in shirt-cum-jackets, that could withstand a beating. Even Alan’s suiting looked like it could stand up to a spontaneous late-night painting sesh.The AbEx influence also reared its head in the collection’s smudged, Rothko-esque palette and in its nods to mid-century beatnik-itude. To wit, the sweatshirt with a turtleneck collar and Alan’s shrug-on (but nevertheless natty) overcoats. Alan wasn’t reinventing his aesthetic, but did give it a considerable twist by hinting hard at bygone downtown bohemia. Still, the great-looking denim was the real story here.
10 February 2016
There's no mistaking Steven Alan for a conceptual designer. He makes commodity clothes, plain and simple. This season, though, Alan did tease a bit of concept: He was thinking about space, and about the uniforms people wear in space, and movies made about space travel, and so on. And so even though Alan's latest menswear collection was chockablock with staple pieces like the perfect pair of glossy twill black shorts, it also digressed into a few unexpected but appealing longueurs. Consider, for instance, Alan's mock-neck tee in white, redolent of the stuff worn by the astronauts in2001: A Space Odyssey, or his short-sleeve button-downs, with their signature trim Steven Alan silhouette, executed in fabrics such as a cartoon Martian head microprint. There was wit here. The emphasis, though, was on Alan's elevated basics—sometimes given a twist, in the case of a cropped-collar polo, or a T-shirt in cotton twill, and sometimes just finessed and re-finessed, as with Alan's soft-shouldered but not unstructured blazer, or his pieces in Japanese chambray and denim, or the super stripped-down bombers and anoraks. Not rocket science, this, but clothes your average rocket scientists—or your average cosmonaut, for that matter—would be delighted to wear.
20 July 2015
Steven Alan has built a formidable business (more than 20 stores between the U.S. and Japan, and counting) on shirting. His vernacular of choice has long been chambrays and crisp cottons, but woman can't stock her closet with those alone. And so each season Alan and his in-house design team set out to fill in some of the ground not covered by the brands he stocks in his many shops.As with his Fall menswear outing, here the designer was thinking a lot about his new home, about furnishings (including a soft, earthy palette inspired by the Austrian ceramist Lucy Rie), and a sense of comfort with a touch of the homespun. To wit: wide-wale corduroys, featherweight merino rib-knits, and a plush faux-fur wrap and vest that bore a striking resemblance to a throw you might hunker down on the sofa with: Alan's takes would be equally suited to Netflix marathons or brunching at Jack's Wife Freda. Indeed, even the chicest pieces here felt as though you could nap in them—alpaca coats were lovely; a cream one-sleeved maxi sweater dress made for an idiosyncratic standout. These weren't clothes made to break molds, but they're the kind of simple, nicely priced, and subtly on-trend styles that have earned Alan a broad fan base—and should only serve to grow that fan base in the seasons to come.
27 February 2015
Steven Alan is very good at making it easy for guys to get dressed. His line covers all the bases—shirting (lots of it), suiting, knits, outerwear—and it's worth noting that the clothes are mostly made in New York. The collection changes almost imperceptibly season to season, but with a growing Japanese market and the increasing style IQ of men across the board, Alan is starting to figure out ways to make dressing interesting as well.The inspiration for Fall '15 was Alan's new house in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. "Relaxing at home," he said in the studio during the lookbook shoot. "But it's not L.A. relaxed. This is New York relaxed." The highlights were still what he does best: shirting. Both the fabrics—super-soft twill, indigo-dyed corduroy, lightweight moleskin—and the construction—minimal field pockets, band collars, triple-needle stitching—are proof that he takes the shirt game seriously. After all, he built his business on it. But it's worth considering the rest of the line. Wide-leg pants in flannel and wide-wale corduroy, elongated sweaters, and lots of faux-fur accessories ("Probably from seeing my kids' stuffed animals all over the house," said the designer) were unexpected but welcome elements. Outwear was particularly compelling, especially the ballistic nylon parka, a neoprene and wool-blend overcoat, and a boiled wool trench. The icing here was a sneaker collaboration with a little-known Boston maker of bespoke marathon shoes called Victory, resulting in a beautifully imperfect pair of retro runners.
6 February 2015
As the song goes, "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start." Celebrating his 20th anniversary, Steven Alan wanted to get back to his roots. And since the shirt is the ABC/"Do-Re-Mi" of his collection and business, it was the main focus of his Spring presentation.The first white short-sleeved shirtdress launched into all the different ways that idea could be developed, he said at the presentation: a cutout tank dress; a cocoon shell and easy skirt; an oversize tunic and loose pants with floral-embroidered hem. And even if the shirt wasn't present as an actual button-down, it was still referenced in the cotton shirting materials, which Alan tweaked with coating or a touch of spandex to naturally crinkle things. The silhouettes were relaxed and played with volume subtly, like a little knit tank worn over hyper-wide-leg pajama pants in a cool, gray-on-gray plaid.A woman in a man's shirt is the genesis of masculine-feminine, and often suggests the morning after. And so it goes that as laid-back as these silhouettes were, as humble the fabrics and as puritan some of the buttoned-all-the-way-up styling, there was a discreet sexiness at play.
11 September 2014
This year, Steven Alan is celebrating his twentieth anniversary in the business. And while Alan has moved from the cotton shirts that originally put his namesake brand on the map to a full-blown collection that includes ready-to-wear, home, eyewear, and shoes, the idea is still the same. Every piece is functional, devoid of bells and whistles or clutter. It's just that, now, Alan's tag can fill up an entire closet instead of an eighth of it.This season, the starting point was the work of realist painter Andrew Wyeth and his wife, Betsey, a frequent subject. Alan also thought about the women in his office piling on oversize sweaters and scarves in the depths of this cold New York City winter, and offered plenty of knits—many done in brushed alpaca for that lofty feeling a lot of designers have been going for this season. A men's gray sweater, for instance, was worn over a collarless shirtdress and cropped, skinny gray wool trousers. A charcoal wool midi skirt was layered under a soft sweater too, this one accented with thin gold bracelets on each wrist. (Jewelry is a new category for Alan, but like the rest of what he does, the delicate pieces complement but don't compete with the other brands he carries in his showroom and stores.) He also brought back the jumpsuit, done in a blue plaid flannel and looking as cozy as a pair of pajamas. The great thing about Steven Alan, and why he's been able to expand his retail footprint so quickly, is that his clothes feel like fashion but are accessible for those who find self-consciously cool labels pretentious. Many different women can be a Steven Alan girl, and this collection reflected that.
12 February 2014
Steven Alan doesn't go in for concepts much. This season, per usual, he kept things matter-of-fact, taking a simple blue band-collared shirt as his starting point and building his collection from there. The focus was on fabric, volume, proportion—nuts and bolts, in other words, out of which Alan put together a collection that transcended its parts. Some of that had to do with tone: There was something ethereal and romantic about these clothes, what with the soft palette, mannerist long shapes, and easy, floating volumes. And much of the success of this outing had to do with Alan's materials, especially his sheer-ish white tulles and soft, Japanese discharge print denim. The fabrics really helped to elevate the collection.Alan did have one "concept" group here, too: The bold floral pajamalike pieces were, he explained, his take on Japanese "roomwear," the relaxed clothes people wear at home. These looks didn't exactly sit with the rest of the collection, but they weren't disruptive either. And anyway, "roomwear" is a fantastic idea and should be widely adopted. Alan's shows have always featured good clothes, which fly out of his expanding empire of stores, but this was his first collection that seemed to have more of a vision in place. It will be interesting to see what's next.
9 September 2013