Not far from where Mark Thomas and Thomas Cawson staged their second runway show for Helmut Lang the brand today, an exhibition of Helmut Lang the man’s latest artwork was opening. Lang walked away from his company 15 years ago, and in the interim, it’s gone through its fair share of incarnations. Perhaps because of the significant amount of time that’s passed or maybe because of the recent success of the reissue concept, Thomas and Cawson are taking a very faithful approach to their reimagining of this famous label.
The reissue is a divisive concept. On the one hand, it’s a clever way to address youthful FOMO, on the other, it’s a design cop-out that doesn’t push the conversation forward. The pros see smart money and the cons insist fashion must reflect the present situation or it risks becoming costume. As with so many things, there’s a generational divide. The olds raise an eyebrow, but the youngs turn up in droves. Today, Jeremy O. Harris, Maisie Williams and her new boyfriend Reuben Selby, Charlie Plummer, Lucky Blue Smith, Selah Marley, and Paloma Elsesser all sat in the front row.
Millennials, it would seem, are the target customers. But in fact, what Thomas and Cawson are up to looks good enough that the Helmut faithful might be intrigued. Absent a few dresses that read too sweet, this was an accurate accounting of Lang’s signatures: the minimal tailoring, the utilitarian parkas, the sheer elements, the chromed leather, the touch of latex kink, the denim shapes. Reproducing the electricity of anticipation that used to course through Lang’s show spaces is a much harder trick to pull off. And it’s probably not fair to ask it of Thomas and Cawson. Lang was an original.
