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Peter Do presented his second collection for Helmut Lang in New York today and as one of the openers of the fashion week season he followed his successful spring/summer with an equally convincing fall/winter. Not just an homage to the founder’s high-respected minimalist aesthetic, however, he delivered an arc into where the brand might have been had the Austrian designer remained in charge today.
The label has undergone multiple acquisitions since Lang sold the remainder of his shares to the Prada group in 2004. Subsequent vendors and creative heads have tried to reestablish its esteemed trendy style of the late 90s/early 2000s but without lasting cut-through. Now Do, whose own eponymous label has found popularity in avant-garde tailoring, is building a fortuitous and analogous bridge between his two houses.
A hazy, smoky room was the setting as models with wet-look hair and charcoal eyes reincarnated some of Lang’s most famed styles. Sheer, plastic-y overlays reminiscent of his ’92 collection, this time done as wearable bubble-wrap, and his once notable bondage-mode offered via textured trousers and looped leather belts. Additionally, a stand-out three-piece mustard tracksuit was an update on an original camel-hued cargo look from 1999. The use of tartan, as the only print in this collection, a nod to a shift dress from the early nineties and the prevalence of sexy, low-buttoned shirting as well as single-breasted wool coats and loose-fitting “man-style” trousers became an extension of the items Lang was known for throughout his career.
However, Do also remained tuned to the current mood and approached his designs with his own agenda. Taking the Helmut Lang business positioning as a more affordable high fashion label, his pieces take on the role of wearable commodity. This is perhaps part of the reason he named it ‘Protection Vs. Projection’ – the need for utility in a world addicted to scroll-stopping looks.
Such portmanteau content came in the form of flak-jacket parkas in both red and creamy-white that featured very cool bonnet hoods, pea coats with military-tailored cross-body fastening and rich, grunge ensembles built from layers of texturally contrasting black (some even with built-in woollen balaclavas). Each look weighted by a deliberate echoing of the unfinished, deconstructed ontology of Lang’s custom minimalist era.
Lang is ubiquitously described as the “designer’s designer’. For those privy to his heyday, he did fashion modernism like no other, and his influence has remained. One only needs to look to last year’s viral Miu Miu ensemble of embellished underpants worn with a three-quarter-sleeve knit (read: Emma Corrin) to know this was first done by Lang in 1992, complete with sheer black hosiery and patent pumps.
For someone like Do, who graduated from The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and was awarded the LVMH graduate prize in 2014, reinstating the Lang brand is well within his reach. Though Helmut Lang himself now resides in Long Island and no longer has anything to do with the company, perhaps this exciting new era will make him less likely to eschew his once highly-respected presence in the fashion world.
