Alexander Wang: Balenciaga's Youthquake
By SUZY MENKES
On Thursday, Alexander Wang will face his baptism by fire. America’s Wonderkind, whose streetwise-meets-couture aesthetic has made him a fashion star in New York at age 29, is bringing his Asian background, his Californian school years and his New York fashion energy to the storied house of Balenciaga.
It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than Mr. Wang in his fluffy sweater and pants and his shoulder-length hair, black and straight, framing his Asian facial features, with Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Spanish designer, whose humble origins grew into a lofty life, dressing the cream of society in architectural haute couture. The unapproachable figure, whom his peers called “the master of us all,” died in 1972, having closed his house in bewilderment at France’s youthquake upheaval.
Mr. Wang is a one-man youthquake, having burst into fashion this new millennium offering inventive but sporty clothes, mostly knitwear, immersed in the spirit of downtown New York. But far more than that, he has built up a powerful business over six years.
“I’m extremely excited. I am high on life. It’s a dream come true,” says Mr. Wang, while admitting to feeling nervous. “My first reaction was: ‘I am so occupied, I give 110 percent to my brand.’ Then I thought of elevating my team and being given a chance to do all those things I had at the back of my mind. I am doing something quite different from what I do here.”
The designer was talking in his downtown studio three days after his New York show, which was perceived as having already included touches of the master’s work in the cut of the clothes and the pared-down pace of the show. He admits that “when the models came in, it was a little bit slower.”
“And in Paris it is going to be very different — it is in the storage space,” Mr. Wang said, referring to the made-over back rooms of the famous salons on Avenue George V, where selected photographers will be given their own presentation, aside from editors and guests.
The “golden triangle” at the fashion heart of Paris is a long way from his teenage San Francisco years, when the novelist Danielle Steel remembers him at 14 as a “lovely, talented kid” who went to high school with three of her children and larked around with the girls doing fashion.
“I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Alex,” Ms. Steel says. “He would get into mischief cutting up clothes and jeans to change the look, while I had a fit over what they were doing. He even made some clothes for them. His talent was evident at an early age.”
What really seems precocious about Mr. Wang is the fact that he has built a serious business while most young designers still have start-ups. Last year he opened a flagship store in Beijing to complement the Grand Street shop he opened in 2011 in the SoHo section of New York. His plan is to open 15 stores in 2013, primarily in Asia.
Although he is helped on the business side by his brother and sister-in-law, Mr. Wang dismisses the legends that his parents are Chinese garment makers and that he is a fluent Mandarin speaker, cracking into laughter at the idea that he can say much more in that language than “a bowl of rice, please!”
“It’s a false background. My family had no experience in garment production and there was no master plan to quit school in my second year,” says the designer, referring to his brief fashion college period at Parsons in New York.
“It’s always been very organic growth for my company; it’s my safety net and what grounds me,” the designer says.
It might turn the wisest head to be approached by François Henri Pinault, chief executive of the PPR luxury group, and be offered, relatively speedily, to take over from the designer Nicolas Ghesquière, who had made Balenciaga a hip and haute brand.
“We had a lot of discussion within the house — and we quite quickly came to the decision that we wanted Balenciaga to be approachable, with a certain youthful sportiness,” says Mr. Pinault, speaking in French and referring to discussions with Balenciaga’s chief executive, Isabelle Guichot.
Anna Wintour, editor in chief of American Vogue, has championed Mr. Wang from the get-go.
“He has so much charm and enthusiasm. He’s not moody and broody and his company is very successful. He is a good guy and fashion is lucky to have him,” says Ms. Wintour, who saw Mr. Wang win the CFDA/Vogue fashion fund award in 2008 and remembers John Galliano at the house of Dior mentoring him. Although Mr. Wang had expressed nervousness at accepting the Balenciaga offer, Ms. Wintour told him that he would never forgive himself if he turned down the opportunity.
Ms. Steel is confident that he can cope. “He started his business very intelligently, and very carefully at first he carved out a niche for himself at a very intelligent price point, but bringing more style to that range of clothes — and he guessed his market well,” she says, referring to Mr. Wang’s marketing to the likes of her 25-year-old daughter.
“Designing for Balenciaga will open him up to new and much broader, loftier horizons and I think he will do it well,” the best-selling author says. “And it will call on his innate sophistication. He adores fashion like my girls do. He is also a diligent, hard worker, young enough to learn and grow and willing to tackle hard tasks.”
But what does Mr. Wang himself think, now that he has faced up to the enormity of the role he has taken on? After all, there is a huge leap from making fluffy sweaters and fur gloves, as if for a boxing ring, to absorbing the heritage of a designer who is, even today, considered the essence of high fashion.
Mr. Wang describes the moment he started looking at the Balenciaga archives: “It was a surreal experience to look at the whole archive that they had just redone,” he says. “It was such an incredible tradition. I was taking things out of the box and there were a lot of personal collectibles from Cristóbal, personal gifts from Vionnet. I didn’t have time to go through everything.”
“There is such austerity to it that is so integral to the house and part of its DNA,” he continues. “I was watching all the videos. Those shows would go on all day! It was such a different world, how they are all dressed and the gowns they would wear on daily basis just to go to dinner.”
But Mr. Wang believes there is one element that he has in common with the silent and unapproachable master of technique and haute elegance, who never gave a press interview or talked about his work.
“He was always such a mystery. He managed to give the perception that he might be very private,” says the engaging Mr. Wang. “The great thing about that is that there is a whole, unknown side of yourself. I know about me — but I save myself for my friends.”
