"Today's look? Getting active." Thus read the window display in Decathlon, a mass-market French sporting-goods retailer not 50 meters from Alexander Wang's Paris showroom. Behind it was a pair of €10 marled, tech-touched, pseudo-bouclé-ish sweatpants. Which illustrates the only downside of carving out new ground: Once you've defined that new territory, others tend to flood in behind you. Wang has been at the vanguard of sportswear's elevation into a bona fide, wear-anywhere apparel category over the last few years. His work is, of course, at a level incomparably higher than the vast majority of the apers. But to prevent them from cramping his style, he must develop his oeuvre.
Fall was Wang-meets-SoCal: winter surf, but Wang-urban, so without the surfboard. As a fashion motif it worked well, had broad customer appeal, and delivered with luxury-touched élan. Lambskin backpacks, bucket hats, and bombers were lasered, somehow, to make them look like terry cotton. This seemed like manipulating prime rib to make it taste like cheap burger, but the results looked great, as did the shearling fleeces. Technical water-resistant nylon M65 jackets had a same-color camouflage relief and Velcro panels. Not all of it was overtly surf-sprayed; an action-backed green melton jacket and the geometric knits could live anywhere. But the tropically tinged fern-relief tailoring that ran through this collection sang winningly of a fashion-kissed Stussy-ness.
