“Good design doesn’t alienate you.” So says newly appointed Helmut Lang creative director Peter Do whose SS24 show opened New York Fashion Week to immense fanfare. The result of the show was perhaps more alienation than Do had in mind.
After his appointment Do had four months to craft the SS24 presentation: an ode to Lang’s early taxicab ads, the poetry of Ocean Vuong, and the boundless Lang archive. 18 years since Lang’s retirement, subsequent cultural absence, a brief and beautiful Shayne Oliver tenure, and more absence, Do’s appointment represented new opportunities for a relevant and modern Helmut Lang. Oliver’s 2018 show was unabashedly his own, bold sex framed by oddball tailoring and brash branding. The day after the show Oliver wasn’t welcome in the Helmut Lang showroom.
There was a comparative safety to Do’s iteration of Helmut Lang. He inserted himself as more a curator than a cutter of cloth - juxtaposing pieces of Lang’s archive, applying the aesthetic of legendary ad campaigns to Vuong’s words on simple shirts, and engineering carefully considered basics. Kinder criticisms claimed that Do had too much respect for Lang coming in - others compared his work to Uniqlo. By the next day, some were choosing any designer showing a collection with white tailoring and claiming it was “more Helmut Lang” than Do’s.
Do’s position is almost impossible. His choices of deviation from Lang, the cab graphics, the fusca seat belts, and Vuong’s text were all deemed sacrilegious. Everything sticking to Lang’s legacy was then criticized as being too safe. In this case commentators seemed to wish for a Do/Lang-child to emerge fully formed from four months of gestation. They required something weird, but respectful, sexy, a specific sexy.
In reality, Fast Retailing Co. (the corporate entities that own both Helmut Lang and Uniqlo) wanted a commercially viable relaunch. They wanted people to know that Helmut Lang was current, and Do explained just that with a pair of flared and belted overalls that would’ve been comfortable in Bottega Veneta’s last show. Many of Do’s archive-inspired pieces, whether they be color-blocked or fusca fluorescent, reveal a way in which Lang’s experiments of old remain not just adjustable to the contemporary, but already modern. As Do articulates, “I want Helmut to be a solution that goes beyond the fashion conversation and into a helpful system of everyday dressing.” In this sense, safety and commerciality are built into the foundation of Do’s lang, alongside a price range from 98$ for tee shirts to 4000$ for specialty items. In this sense, Helmut Lang becomes Do’s canvas to perfect the 300-400$ perfect denim set for the everyman, while his namesake brand re-engineers and tinkers with what may result in an 800$ pair of denim.
Imagine this train of thought presented to the Lang archivist, the purist and collector. There are active communities devoting thousands of dollars and endless energy into proclaiming Lang’s brilliance, for whom Do’s desire to justify Lang’s modernism is redundant and insulting. Do’s new garments, particularly those that drive up the competition for or potentially dilute the artifacts of old are to be seen as nothing but objects of scorn.
Helmut Lang SS24 is the straddling of newness with longlasting pasts, a challenging and solidifying of what is a legitimate or “real“ Lang. The difference in this case, is PR. The show seems designed for a digital age of rabidly well researched archivists. The saavy of SS24 is that it recognizes even amidst the scorn of archive fashion communities, they will still be unable to resist posting side-by-side shots of the collection and those it references. Here, all press is good press.
The hype that preceded Do’s debut, its press saavy, and the blatant push for a populist, accessible HL all serve as underlying points of scorn in many critiques. The earnestness embedded in the collection seems overshadowed by its calculated qualities- perhaps an underestimation of the loyalty and standards Lang fans hold.
Cathy Horyn recently wrote a fascinating piece for the Cut about the changing roles and expectations of the creative director. She writes,
This system does not benefit those who are actually designing and cutting garments - the Margielas or McQueens. Instead, it benefits those like Pharrell Williams or Daniel Lee. Horyn writes about John Galliano’s 1999 fall Dior Cotoure show that drew criticism for its use of heavily cut leather nakedness in cotoure and its power in using the misunderstood and unnapreciated to move fashion forward. Discomfort encourages change. Today, the creative director is preoccupied with so many additional factors and projects that the focus is never solely on the potential power of the garment.
Horyn describes a landscape of directorless fashion houses struggling to stand out and maintain sales, and notably unable to lure popular indie designers to their fold. Horyn’s analysis also proves an excellent standard for examining what it means to revitalize a brand - the most explicit expression of a newness or disruption that historian Valerie Steele describes in “a creeping paralysis.”
From 2018 to 2021, Daniel Lee turned Bottega Veneta into a powerhouse. There was an it-bag, it-shoes that transcended luxury and street, and a powerful visual team that pumped out distinctive campaigns and publications. Bottega operated between the niche of Balenciaga’s cynicism and Gucci’s exhorbitance - perhaps a precursor to today’s “quiet luxury“ moment. In 2021 Lee was hired at Burberry where he quickly designed a new logo and released some of the brand’s best campaigns in years. However, his debut was mercilessly skewered for gauche color combos, overly simple ensembles, and modifications to Burberry’s check. Judgement arrived again this week, when items from the collection dropped. Highlights of criticism were a 21 thousand dollar viscose dress and a knit duck hat at 4,500. In essence, Lee seemed to be asking for his Bottega customers back, minus the attention to craft. The result was a tasteless irony, a Balenciaga vulgarity no longer in vogue and not even that ostentatious.
Lee still has his Burberry job, but some are not so lucky. Rhuigi Villasenor of 2010s lux-streetwear brand Rhude fame was chosen to revamp Bally, and was fired after two collections. Ludovic De Saint Sernin wasn’t even given a chance to see if his Ann Demeulemeester debut would sell before being fired.
This trend is another articulation of Horyn’s diagnosis, and an explanation for why designers are less enthusiastic about excepting CD roles in large houses. Nigo’s apparent success at Kenzo may be thanks to his establishment in a variety of global communities for different products and aesthetics. Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton rebrand this summer, a weilding of glitz and clout and the welding of Pharrell’s humility with calculated returns, is the logical step from Nigo’s success. In a fashion world dictated more by clout, spectacle, and commercial returns, celebrity CD’s are the natural response. It’s a foolproof recipe for star studded events, viral moments, and clothes so lukewarm anyone can buy them. Pharrell’s collection releases next summer, and I wonder if they will.
I was genuinely surprised at the vitriol and genuine misunderstanding hurled at Peter Do’s collection. Do is one of the few indie designers with a well articulated and seemingly profitable perspective on how clothes can be bought, constructed, and reused, and the press to back it up. The mask that remains on his face in interviews serves as more than a hollow reference to Margiela, it is a continuation of an ethos that centers clothing rather than personality. I’m confused as to why anyone would think the same conglomerate that ousted Shayne Oliver would keep or respect Do if he experimented with HL in the way he did with his namesake brand. I don’t think Do would have accepted HL’s position if not for the ability to do something different from his own brand of experimentation. Were expectations so warped that they expected such vast room to redefine HL?
My interest with Do’s Helmut Lang is with an artist confined. How does Do please everybody? How does Do sell without selling out? What are his compromises and what are his inescapable personal moments? Where is Do carving his niche for the Helmut Lang of the future?
Not every moment of Do’s Lang is perfect, memorable, or exacted with precision. It took a new set of pictures of the show shot by Alex Dobé for some to concede that the show looked far more like a Lang show when photographed differently. That being said, I found Do’s experiment in an old, untended house far more interesting than the endless spectacle and performativity exhibited during much of New York Fashion Week. Regardless, it’s not as if anyone is holding brands like Coach, Dolce, or Dior at the same standard of perfectly exemplifying their house’s former glory, or bringing attention from spectacle back to the garment.
Ironically, Horyn’s biting indictment of Do’s show and the fashion landscape is what gives me hope for both this collection and Do’s tenure. After all, a Peter Do show this calculated still becomes a kind of experiment. It may not have been his strangest, nor the most boundary-pushing show under the Helmut Lang brand, but it still ends up far more affecting than mudd pits, AI lookbooks, or camo Damier print.
In Horyn’s darkly predicted landscape, why not celebrate the small victories.