A short article about Erin & Alexander Wang's first collaboration
"She's so my Style" Vogue November 2007
Here's how it happened: Eight months ago, 23-year-old designer Alexander Wang started working on the spring collection for his self-titled line. He was playing with combinations of "business basics" and "mix-matchy model style" in general. He was thinking about Melanie Griffith in Working Girl and the model Erin Wasson, whose sun-kissed face and fearless high-low fashion sense he loves, specifically. One day Wang got into an elevator going up to his East Village apartment, and, coincidentally, there was Wasson. It turned out the 25-year-old Texas native/California surfer had a place in the building, too. He introduced himself, the two got talking, and they became fast friends. So when Wang asked her to style his first-ever runway show in New York, she, despite never having done one before, said yes.
They agreed to start by creating an editorial look book of the collection for inspiration. For this they hired photographer Dan Martensen (a friend of Wasson's who once took a picture of her that, Wang said, epitomizes the youthful sexiness he's going for with his line), and they drove to a marina on Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn to shoot Wang's clothes one hot, hot day in early August. Wasson brought a suitcase full of her own vintage shoes-woven-leather oxfords, spotted cowhide loafers, and buckled ankle boots-to pair with Wang's offbeat office essentials and flirty polka-dot pieces. When Wang said he wanted a "working woman made funkier," Wasson put a boxy cherry-red blazer on model Natasha Vojnovic as if it were a dress, for example, and accessorized all the looks with her own fine and junky silver jewelry.
"This collection is the most 'me,' " said Wang. "Erin totally gets it."
Cut to September 4: "It's fun being on the other side," says Wasson, who still does runway here and there. She's sitting on the floor of Wang's studio, waiting for the next model to arrive for a fitting. It's two days before the show at the Bumble and Bumble salon downtown. Everything is mapped out on corkboard pinned with Martensen's Polaroids. The silver Rogues Gallery jewelry that Wasson called in to work with (in lieu of using all her own) has arrived. The shoes that Wang will use-custom-made Manolo Blahnik spectator heels and slip-ons-are laid out on the cutting table. The full collection hangs on three racks. There's a pleated sleeveless blouse, a stone-gray blazer, and a silk collared shirtdress. There are also four sweaters from Wang's new cheap-chic knitwear line, Tricot. It's all a little bit conservative, but messy, too, "so that the girls who buy it don't have to think about how they're going to take it apart," Wang says. He describes one button-down blouse as "business in the front, party in the back," which pretty much sums it up.
Today Wasson is wearing a simple mini, a V-neck T-shirt, bare feet, no makeup, and still she's striking. Her personal style suggests that she's especially good at getting the right amount of chaos from a more controlled aesthetic. When the model arrives, Wasson puts her in a preppy plaid dress but pairs it with ankle socks and pointy-toe flats so that the look becomes hipster-dorky and, therefore, mildly subversive. "Alex's clothes are so simple and radical," she says. "I just go with my gut."
September 6, 3:40 p.m.: It's 20 minutes before the show, Bumble and Bumble is full to capacity, and publicists are turning people away at the door. Backstage, Wang and Wasson are inseparable. He perfects the imperfections on every girl, one by one. She paces the salon picking lint off the models, who all look less like the sexy secretaries that Wang first envisioned and more like the daring urban women who'll be wearing these clothes come spring-which in a way means they've succeeded. "That's it," Wang says before the lights go down. "It's every woman for herself now."
2 of my absolute favorite models, erin and Isabeli are killin it. Erin looks the tallest how tall is she?
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