Helmut Lang’s Seedy New Lookbook Is Cooler Than Some Street Style Galleries
Brand: Helmut Lang
Season: FW20
Key Pieces: Call me basic (!) but those blue jeans look amazing. The furry brown coat — based on an archival design — is also a slapper.
Buy: TBC
Editor’s Notes: A street style gallery with actual personality?! Surely such a thing doesn’t exist! Just kidding. Ditching the runway, Helmut Lang presented its FW20 collection with a staged lookbook lensed by Sunil Gupta. New Yorkers will note the location is Christopher Street — the scene of Gupta’s iconic work from 1976.
The gender-fluid collection, creative director Thomas Cawson’s first flying solo after the departure of Mark Howard Thomas to Lacoste, trades in the label’s trademark sensual finesse for pure grot. And it works. Sexy, heavy-duty workwear shirts are left unbuttoned and tucked into high-waisted pants, while a slip dress can be seen on a fella who looks like he’s just left an all-night warehouse rave at 2 p.m. the following day. Good on him.
This is an important period for Helmut Lang, having toiled throughout the mid-00s before getting its act together in recent times. If this debut effort from Cawson is anything to go by, he looks set to build on that momentum further. Check out the garms and photographs for yourself at the address below.
