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flaunt the imperfection
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from wwd...excerpt...
Cashmere Dash
Talk to 21-year-old designer Alexander Wang... this native Californian with roots in Taiwan.
But now Wang has left the theatrics behind and is designing a collection of no-frills cashmere sweaters under his own name, wholesaling at $100 to $210. It’s his answer to what’s missing in the market right now: a classic that appeals to every age group. “I wanted to start with that one timeless item that I could take and change up, make young and hip, but also keep a luxury item,” he says. Silhouettes are stretched so they’re longer and looser; trimmings and hardware step away from the traditional, like spring’s raw wooden buttons or fall’s oversized, velvet ones; and, for the collection’s pièce de résistance, Wang revamps his garments with a nouveau take on intarsia. Gone are the geometric and one-note patterns of cashmeres of yore; large portraits of jet-set types peer out from Wang’s tops, the knitting reversed and raw stitching exposed to give it more texture. Cashmere never had it so rock ’n’ roll good.
Initially, Wang had wanted to do a supermodel story, given his infatuation with the top girls from the Eighties and early Nineties. His ideal intarsia? Kate Moss, a fact a large poster in his studio discloses. Trademark complications, however, led Wang elsewhere, and true to form, he found the next best thing in his close friends. “I thought it would be interesting to use people that I knew and have a more personal experience with,” he says. “People could relate to that more than just using something from a magazine.”
Models, nevertheless, might want to take a closer look. Wang may have dropped out of Parsons after two years, but he has made up for it with his time interning at Marc Jacobs and Derek Lam, as well as Teen Vogue and Vogue — not to mention his landing seven retail accounts in New York and California for the collection’s spring debut. He already plans to up the number of looks from six to 22 for fall — expect cashmere separates, skirts and dresses, and a très chic hat story for his intarsia girls — with accessories ambitiously scheduled for the season after that.
And the icing on the proverbial cake? Wang recently visited two of the stores and found that his spring shipment had already sold out.* — V.L.
Cashmere Dash
Talk to 21-year-old designer Alexander Wang... this native Californian with roots in Taiwan.
But now Wang has left the theatrics behind and is designing a collection of no-frills cashmere sweaters under his own name, wholesaling at $100 to $210. It’s his answer to what’s missing in the market right now: a classic that appeals to every age group. “I wanted to start with that one timeless item that I could take and change up, make young and hip, but also keep a luxury item,” he says. Silhouettes are stretched so they’re longer and looser; trimmings and hardware step away from the traditional, like spring’s raw wooden buttons or fall’s oversized, velvet ones; and, for the collection’s pièce de résistance, Wang revamps his garments with a nouveau take on intarsia. Gone are the geometric and one-note patterns of cashmeres of yore; large portraits of jet-set types peer out from Wang’s tops, the knitting reversed and raw stitching exposed to give it more texture. Cashmere never had it so rock ’n’ roll good.
Initially, Wang had wanted to do a supermodel story, given his infatuation with the top girls from the Eighties and early Nineties. His ideal intarsia? Kate Moss, a fact a large poster in his studio discloses. Trademark complications, however, led Wang elsewhere, and true to form, he found the next best thing in his close friends. “I thought it would be interesting to use people that I knew and have a more personal experience with,” he says. “People could relate to that more than just using something from a magazine.”
Models, nevertheless, might want to take a closer look. Wang may have dropped out of Parsons after two years, but he has made up for it with his time interning at Marc Jacobs and Derek Lam, as well as Teen Vogue and Vogue — not to mention his landing seven retail accounts in New York and California for the collection’s spring debut. He already plans to up the number of looks from six to 22 for fall — expect cashmere separates, skirts and dresses, and a très chic hat story for his intarsia girls — with accessories ambitiously scheduled for the season after that.
And the icing on the proverbial cake? Wang recently visited two of the stores and found that his spring shipment had already sold out.* — V.L.
