Exploring Fashion’s Linear New Now

Ahn’s Tokyo-based AMBUSH had been well-known in the jewelry market for some time. By contrast Williams and his line, 1017 ALYX 9SM, were still a little bit under-the-radar, and least in terms of profile size. Think: low-key New York City-centric garments and accessories (though the line is now based in Italy) and an insular albeit high-profile group of friends (including Kanye West and Lady Gaga). If Williams had developed a signature, it was his minimally marked hardware: heavy-duty buckles and industrial metalwork had featured noticeably across his aesthetic output, and Jones had seen how these elements were catching on amongst 1017 ALYX 9SM’s fans. What came next was a reintroduction of Dior’s ‘Saddle’ bag, now for all genders, and now with Williams’ increasingly recognizable engineered accent. It became one of the most in-demand and photographed carriers that year and in 2019—for both men and women.

Williams’ reputation has since climbed. He is the recently appointed artistic director at Givenchy, following Clare Waight Keller’s exit, and presented his first collection for the house this fall. Certainly, his engineering-influenced approach helped to propel him to this level; he generated iconicity in a way that transcended the logo or the proverbial ‘splash.’ He devised something tough, urbane, sophisticated, subtle and yet standout in tandem. In some ways, his buckle has become as much a figure of form as, say, Cartier’s ‘Juste un Clou’ wrapped nail or Patek Philippe’s warped-porthole Nautilus watch. The branding is minimal, but the shape is maximal. And, while Keller’s Givenchy softened what her predecessor Riccardo Tisci built, Williams’ could also stand to engineer his vision for the house in a more angular, structured way. Tisci had sharp shoulders, sharp footwear, even sharp shark-tooth necklaces. Williams may bring it back in that direction, layering in a finessed sort of architecture to help reset, or realign, the Givenchy image.

This orbit around finite form and structure is also observed with two other key names in the industry at the moment: Virgil Abloh, who is a licensed architect himself, in addition to being the lead at Louis Vuitton menswear and the founder of OFF-WHITE, and Raf Simons, who studied industrial and furniture design before his career in fashion, and who has been hired as Co-Creative Director at Prada. 

Most recently, Abloh has demonstrated his eye for architectural and industrial design by creating a line for the Swedish megabrand Ikea. He has also brought this sensibility to his clothing: OFF-WHITE’s logo is its own sort of pointed grid, a blueprint double-semaphore representing Abloh’s cross-disciplinary intent. He is an admirer of legendary modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as the Dutch architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas.

While Abloh’s clothing designs are often a miscellany of connective jumping-off points, the fundamentality of what he does is, genuinely, based in structure and programming. See, for example, handbags introduced last year that have circular cutouts in their bodies. They function more as sculptures, or even miniature models of buildings, if one were to extrapolate. 

Or, consider Abloh’s world-famous ‘quotation mark’ branding technique; by placing an open quote and an end quote around any word, there is an implied notion of soundness. Of place and purpose. Of an equation being established, and almost of a mathematical significance being assigned. Abloh's quotes add quantification to a word. For Walking, which appears on a thigh-high boot in his oeuvre (and which has also been seen, amongst all possible contexts, on a Donald Trump meme) takes on a whole new gravitas and formality when spelled out as “For Walking.” Abloh’s knack for formatting and utilizing systems is both notable and impressive; he has long said he wants to explore the gray (off-white) areas between creative disciplines, and, given his training, it’s clear how much engineering intuition still holds sway.

Architecture is not far from the auteur Raf Simons’ mind, either; Miuccia Prada’s new co-creative director at Prada he is well-versed, has an academic background in a related field, and has shown interest on a commercial scale before (for Dior Resort 2016, when he was running womenswear for the label, he held that season’s runway show at Pierre Cardin’s Palais Bulles in Southern France—it is known as the “bubble” or “eyeball” house). There’s also often a graphic linearity present in the collections for his eponymous menswear label. Prada herself is an architecture buff, most publicly hiring Rem Koolhaas’s OMA firm to design the Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy, which was completed in 2015. 

Prada is fashion’s forerunner when it comes to cerebral instincts and heady thought provocation. She has been, for a while. There is always much to be said around a Prada collection, both in regards to how the critics are interpreting it and to what Miuccia was trying, or not trying, to convey. Simons is just as thoughtful and elusive a designer, and it will be interesting to see if his penchant for architecture is put front and center, which would seem a natural fit in hybridizing with Prada’s intellect. It feels likely: a kind of methodical, modular approach, blending, say, Prada’s classic nylon pieces and triangular logo motif with the academic rigor of Simons’s innovative approach.

The overall point? These designers do not sacrifice romance, or feelings of want and wonder, but their overarching presentation is based in logic. In equations and solutions, with pylons rooted in form, function, and structure. This kind of orderliness makes sense for fashion right now. Even if it’s subconscious and does not apply to a viewer directly, a blueprint—a plan—is a needed and reassuring sign.