Alexander Wang is rarely in a suit and rarely in a pattern. And he is one designer who designs, if not for himself, at least what he himself would wear. From the very beginnings of his menswear collection, the emphasis has fallen on the sort of pieces he personally favors: sportswear with a strong dose of street. Several seasons in, it still is.
But for Fall, Wang aimed to bring some of the more traditional elements of the menswear wardrobe into his world. He brought in men's suiting patterns, like herringbone and glen plaid, but remixed them, so to speak, into a gray and black mélange that resembles static fuzz. Tailoring is still barely a presence, though a baseball shirt introduced last season has morphed into a leather baseball shirt jacket that, worn open, may be what a blazer comes to look like when it crosses the border into Wangland. Black remains the dominant color and leather the dominant material, as in bonded-wool car coats and glazed jeans that come with ultra-long legs designed to be scrunched.
Fall found Wang's style concentrated if not dramatically expanded. This, the implicit message ran, is Alexander Wang. That message was made explicit by the addition of the first men's logo pieces, in the mold of those he introduced for womenswear for Spring: T-shirts and sweatshirts that bore his name in laser-cut neoprene.
