“I do see the man and the woman hanging out,” said Matthew Williams as we looked at this womenswear follow-up to January’s menswear show. He continued: “The beautiful thing about Alyx is that the history of the brand is being written every day in real time. It’s like a personal monologue. What I was interested in at 27 when I started the brand, it’s evolved a lot, now that I’m 37 and that’s okay. It’s not that we need to make clothes for club kids, which is something I was probably more interested in when I started out.”
Nonetheless, you could see some of these looks killing it in the club, alongside the Alyx man or not. These included the dog-collar stud neck distressed-hem dresses at the start and finish, the slip dress in a print from the carry-over Mark Flood artist collaboration, plus the gathered-neck metal mesh top (with pink distressed denim shorts ) and minidress. Equally you could place William’s Alyx women in more genteel contemporary scenarios— gallery openings, creative meetings, bank robberies and the like—in his jewel detailed, satin revered, rough-edged tailoring, rib knit dresses, and studded knee leather pants and shearlings.
The treated lace on draped pants and tops was another reference to Flood’s lace paintings, and its delicate discord countered nicely against the harder turmoil in leathers that had been carefully dyed, washed, printed, and then burned to create multi-layered depth. The silver rabbit hardware was also Flood-sourced, based on a painting of melted, mixing Easter bunnies. The cowboy boots, some Flood-printed, others plainer, had their leather toes sliced open to reveal uncompromising steel caps beneath. There were two new bags, the unisex Payton and the feminocentric Raya, both of which came in Flood prints and various vegan and non-vegan fabrications.
Williams, both through parsing these last two Alyx collections and keeping an eye on his wider activities, appears to be entering a fresh and progressively galvanized phase of design. He said: “I want to allow the brand to mature and grow and evolve with my tastes and life: It is such a personal project.”
