When model Iekeliene Stange arrived at her Alexander Wang fitting the week before the show, the enchantingly off-kilter beauty walked up to a look intended for her and proclaimed it "exactly what I want to wear." For Wang, that moment is the fashion equivalent of a slam dunk. Simply put: The 23-year-old designer loves to make cool, chic clothes that cool, chic girls love to wear.
Wang said he had been thinking about the film Working Girl and Giorgio Armani s eighties-era power dressing. "It s about a humble girl who came from nothing, making a living," he explained. But his real muse is his customer, particularly the insouciantly ultra-stylish being he calls the M.O.D. (Model Off-Duty). This time around that included the show s stylist, semiretired runway star Erin Wasson.
The result could best be described as a refined vision of what might happen if a pack of catwalkers plundered the career floors at Bloomingdale s circa 1987 and wove the loot into their own wardrobes. Naturally, it would mean looks like an oversized gray blazer with sleeves jammed up to the elbows over a wife-beater and shredded cutoffs, or a lace-trimmed bustier paired up with the trousers that once partnered with that aforementioned jacket. Beyond those easy-to-fathom ensembles were polished dresses cut in menswear wools and shirting along with casual wardrobe essentials, like the elusive just-right, thin heather-gray T-shirt and terrific, slouchy light denim jeans. These soon-to-be-staples made up for a few looks that should only ever be worn by professional mannequins.
