This Week’s Wow: Alexander Wang X H&M Collection Lives Up to the Hype

Alberto Reyes/WENN.com

OCTOBER 17, 2014 @ 12:30 PM

BY: ERIC WILSON

In this particular weekly feature, InStyle’s Fashion News Director Eric Wilson shares his favourite fashion moment of the week, and explains how it could shape styles ahead. Look for it on What’s Right Now every Friday.

The Moment: Truth be told, the Alexander Wang X H&M collection probably wasn’t intended for me. In a preview come july 1st, and again yesterday when images were released in advance of the big demonstrate planned way uptown at the Armory on the Hudson, the clothes struck myself as decidedly normal. Gym clothes in gray and black, tweaked with all the designer’s name as an overbearing logo. “WANG! ” they screamed in a agreement of black, black, more black, and a little bit of gray. I’m outside the target-audience range here by a decade, possibly more.

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Then emerged the show, and, like most people who were there, I was completely seduced. For one thing, it may be impressive that H&M, a decade after it introduced the first such fast-fashion effort with Karl Lagerfeld, can still create a moment of extreme excitement around event shopping. The other point is, Wang is the perfect designer for the H&M generation, one who creates clothes which can be wearable in real-life and still transmit an aura of designer fashion. These kinds of didn’t look at all skimpy in their construction or fabrics, nor are they snobbish in price.

The show, just after 8: 30 p. m., started with a slickly-produced one-minute video with supermodels pounding through an intense workout that involved traveling by air through brick walls and, in one case, Joan Smalls in pigtails, going up against with a fierce wind somewhere in the Artic to grab hold of her WANG-logo beanie. Then black-clad gymnasts poured onto the runway, an asphalt racetrack, rebounded magically on trampolines, then gave way to Wang’s warriors (see these seems and more in the video above). They wore athletic leggings with AWs around the knees, and padded utility vests with pockets for water bottles, tips, and phones, and scuba dresses and leather boxing gloves that dangled around their necks. For men, there were silver down-filled puffers, and gym denims and muscle shirts with what appeared to be a black-on-black crocodile pattern, which, to get a very brief instant, I could see even myself wearing at my local status-gymwear-loving Equinox, though definitely without the clear protective plastic face guard as proven (below).

menswear-wang-hm Benjamin Lozovsky/BFAnyc/Sipa USA

Why It’s a Wow: To start, Jessica Chastain, Solange Knowles, Justin Theroux, Kate Mara, Mary J. Blige, Melissa George, Dakota Fanning, Eddie Redmayne and Diplo were there. And while it would have been challenging to top Donatella Versace’s 2011 H&M party that included performances by Royal prince and Nicki Minaj, Wang’s show was followed by a concert by Missy Elliott (pictured, below). She wore a WANG-screaming baseball cap as the lady sang “Get Ur Freak On, ” “Work It” and “Pass That will Dutch, ” songs that predate the current social-media-content-driven phenomenon of concerts just where people don’t raise lighters in appreciation, but cell phones. Elliott, while maybe amused by the prospect of singing to an audience of electronic devices, wasn’t possessing it.

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“Did y’all come to be cute, or did you come to party? ” the lady scolded.

They may have come to Instagram, but they stayed to party.

missy-elliot Andrew L. Walker/Getty Images for H&M

Learn More: Count the days until Nov. 6, if the Alexander Wang X H&M when the collection goes on sale in H&M retailers, as well as online at hm. com (with some pieces available at alexanderwang. com).


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