Alexander Wang A/W 2014
If you're going to drag fashion editors 40 minutes away from the city centre to the New York borough of Brooklyn for a late night fashion show in the middle of an icy winter, expectations amongst show guests are inevitably going to run higher than usual. From first glance, it was hard to fully comprehend Alexander Wang's unusual choice of location. After all, only a tiny corner of an enormous white steel and glass building, sitting in the midst of The Brooklyn Navy Yard, had been colonised for the show space. We could have, potentially, been anywhere. Much of the discomfort, however, soon dissipated with the arrival of twitching lights and thunderous music, followed by a storm of stomping feet belonging to models encased in over the knee boots with built in shin guards and white rubber soles. Wang put on the power this season, significantly upping his fashion ante in a more menacing, aggressive way. Part of this had to do with the women's hair, which had been spray painted a matte burglar black and clipped short like a boy's; but mainly it was thanks to clothes that were bulky, boxy, oversized and stiffened. Leather shorts and skirts, for example, were embossed and mutilated with perforations, while shearling and net jackets had the proportions of a refrigerator. Sportswear hybrids are where Wang excels and this season he delivered stellar grey flannel or navy wool jackets that were covered in fisherman's pockets and paired with shin guard mule boots. The rotating fashion carousel was a final flourish, and all in good fun. But couldn't it have happened at Pier 94 in Manhattan?
Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans
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