Last night as the sun set and rain swept through pier 17 at South Street Sea Port in Manhattan, Alexander Wang presented ’Collection 1’ - a 56 look ode to neo-Americana. Though New York Fashion Week is not due to start for another few months, Wang has decided to stray from the de facto seasonal schedule and show during pre-collection's season. Sure, traditionalism is old hat and anything that’s disruptive is considered cool (see: the beauty industry), but as far as house codes went this was old school Wang through and through.
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With stars and stripes painted across their faces and Axl Rose-inspired bandanas wrapped around their foreheads, Insta-famous male and female models walked out to heavy metal and Childish Gambino's This Is America. They wore XXL-sized leather, denim and tailored jackets with teeny weeny shorts, micro-mini skirts and low-slung chunky logo belts. It was sexy in the Bella Hadid street style school of sexy with chainmail bra tops spliced with tube socks and sneakers and dissected sports jerseys.
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Wang, himself the scion of immigrants, worked signifiers of his heritage into a collection dripping with ironic bolo ties and Mercedes Benz ornaments. There was a Nehru collared blue cheongsam jacket tucked into a pair of little leather shorts and flannel sweatpants - like the type bros that play beer pong at Ivy league universities wear - printed with the word 'Chinatown' on their left leg.
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On each guest’s chair was a slip of paper from Wang explaining this was ‘a new beginning, a new identity and a new day for my brand.’ And, yet, this collection was the synthesis of everything the Wang label has been up until now: dark, edgy and made-for-millennials.