Alexander Wang is seemingly unstoppable, and he's set to add menswear to the list of his conquests. It's a category he broached initially with his more casual T line. After growing it, he inched into the designer market with a capsule offering. The accolades began arriving almost immediately. He'd scarcely started men's T when GQ named him their 'Best new menswear designer of the year'; his first designer pieces hadn't even hit stores when the CFDA nominated him for its emerging-designer Swarovski Award. "For me, when it comes to menswear, it comes down to uniform", Alexander Wang said of his aesthetics. "I really wanted to visit the classics and things that guys know and understand. It wasn't about reinventing the wheel and testing them. Just taking things and applying these details to the point where the details aren't the first things you notice. You're attracted to it because it's something that you recognize, and you fall in love with it because the details lure you and surprise you". Sportswear pieces were the building blocks of the collection -the sportier the better. Track pants, running shorts, hoodies, sweatshirts, and varsity jackets were all key. Mr Wang's own uniform, to be precise. The details ranged from minute to the maximal : mixed materials, and even shapes, sharing the space of a single garment. It lent them a bit of a Frankenstein charge. Wovens and knits bled into one another; technical twill with glazed nylon finished off with a paper-thin leather Alexander Wang called calf chiffon. Outerwear was the strongest category, with a combo bomber jacket the best of the bunch, but glazed cotton knits were strong as well, some intarsia-ed with subtle tonal patterning. If a but, it was that Alexander Wang's classics and menswear's classics weren't always one and the same. Suffice it to say, there were no suits here. In broad strokes alone, the collection resembled the T line from which it grew. And more so than for women's, Mr Wang freely admited, the customer for men's T and men's prêt-à-porter is the same. The ready-to-wear can boast refinements in fabrics and fabrications, but its own aesthetics is still emerging. Clarifying it relative to T will be the designer's challenge going forward. The guy he's creating it for, Alexander Wang says, isn't a fashion guy -it's the guy his girl likes. That guy is sure to appreciate the tech-y sportif cool on offer as well as its casual ease. But is he ready to pay fashion-guy prices ? Time will tell.
