"We wanted to take a cleaner approach," Alexander Wang said of his latest men's collection. "To strip away the hardware, the cargo flaps, the pockets—all that we've played with before." Clean it may be, but it's also dark. Spring tends to send designers thinking light thoughts, but Wang's choice of a largely black, white, and red palette felt ominous. It also swallowed up, at least in photo form, some of the details that make the collection interesting. The twists here come at the stitch level. Jackets and tops have intersecting seaming and graphic paneling; those in contrasting colors had the look of flags. Make that Black Flag. It's a severe take on sportswear—emphasis on sport, with baseball jerseys in leather and boxing shorts—but the ready-for-anything mentality suits Wang. To his credit, he doesn't go halfway. His napa leather bombers are rubberized; even his dress shirts are waterproofed. "Taking more of a slick approach," is how he described it. Also more of a total approach: Debuting for the first time was a men's shoe, a chukka style that Wang says he wears all the time.
