As the final show of the week, 1017-Alyx-9SM completes the four-city relay of the Fall 2020 menswear season. The timeslot is significant, and reflects how Matthew Williams is regarded as a serious young talent with a persuasive vision and a conviction for time-honored production. There’s also the buzz factor: he attracts an insider-y crowd and casts both blockbuster and transgender models; he creates an intoxicating atmosphere through his music; and he hovers on the cusp of greatness in a way the industry loves. He is, to cite the thumping Turnstile & Mall Grab track he and DJ Surkin selected for the soundtrack, the real thing.
Up until now, Williams’ collections and the collaborations that occur in between (his designs for Moncler Genius dropped this month) have stood out as precise exercises in formality and utility. With this collection, his second to take place in the spectacular, soaring glass atrium of a Paris bank building, he revealed a greater impulse towards luxury as well as a freer desire for expression. There was ostrich-effect leather, which befitted women’s dress silhouettes and all-purpose coats alike. There were kiss marks embedded in what appeared to be an animal spot pattern. From the girls in silky dresses and tops that looped around the neck as single twisting gestures and the guys in diamante-embellished denim, to the strict, gender-neutral looks at the end of the lineup, Williams was seducing from all different angles.
The stylized diamante Western motif, which stood out most of all, was an ironically ornate, autobiographical allusion to Williams’s family heritage (they were farmers at the beginning of the last century and his grandmother was the chairwoman of the California Mid-State fair). Embellishment has been everywhere this week and here it was again, transforming a black Mackintosh into a most rarefied and radiant raincoat. Everyone wore gleaming clips in their hair, a glamorous flourish to ward off the bleakness. “I think it feels like change is coming and everything is starting to feel new and exciting,” said Williams, whose positive outlook was palpable throughout.
