How two American designers are rewriting the established codes of luxury far away from home.

How Matthew Williams and Rhuigi Villaseñor are rewriting the established codes of luxury fashion far away from home at Givenchy and Bally, respectively.

The Chicago-born Williams launched 1017 ALYX 9SM in 2014. His drive, he explains to GOAT over a video call from his rooftop apartment in Paris, comes from a pure desire to create. “I’m a designer who makes clothes people wear, and who lives out loud through my work. It’s just what I do as a human being to feel okay. Maybe people connect to it because it’s honest.” The brand celebrates its 10th anniversary next year, but ALYX is still a self-described “personal monologue” for Williams.
Now based between the French capital and Milan, Williams grew up in Southern California before moving to New York in his early 20s, where he found notoriety as part of the art and music collective #BEENTRILL# alongside the late Virgil Abloh and <a href="https://www.goat.com/editorial/heron-preston">Heron Preston</a>, also becoming Lady Gaga’s creative director for a two-year stint.

His career path thus far has also been entwined with his personal life and Williams’ creative output is a direct expression of that. From the playlists which soundtrack the ALYX and <a href="https://www.goat.com/brand/givenchy">Givenchy</a> shows to numerous collaborations with brands like Stüssy, clothes provide the medium for a map of Williams’ life, offering a canvas for the audience to project themselves onto.
Both Williams and Villaseñor’s upbringings provide the archetypal baseline for their work. “It’s your formative years of what is an archetype to you. You can’t help but have formative bricks in your creative mind that come from the information that happens when you’re young. And mine is California; surfing, skating, rap music,” Williams offers. These bygone memories feed into “a relevant version existing in the future,” the designer explains.

Similarly, Rhude’s recent collaboration with Zara is indicative of Villaseñor’s dream to make aspirational clothing that is accessible to his own community. What’s telling is when this approach is taken outside of the context of projects like ALYX or Rhude, and applied to heritage brands with their own cultural histories.
Villaseñor’s vision of Bally is European luxury meets Los Angeles sensibilities. For FW23, show notes directly reference the city and Villaseñor’s “connection to [...] the blockbuster tropes of Hollywood. As a designer in the process of honoring the past while projecting its future, his approach eschews the fleeting moment for the full movie.” For his sophomore Bally collection, Villaseñor looked at the jet-set crowd and reimagined the people and places in Town&amp;Country Magazine: What would that look like if he inserted himself and his peers into its pages?&nbsp;

He referenced jazz musician Miles Davis, with leather coats quilted in diamond matelassé, together with ideas of European opulence via leather riding boots, sweeping military coats and faux-fur trims. Echoes of Western fashion history are present in the Saint Laurent-inspired hooded dresses and the metallic gunmetal Tom Ford-era Gucci-esque coat dresses—worlds away from the graphic tees Rhude was founded on.
Bally provides a space for the designer to reframe heritage icons like the Princeton shoe, a hero piece for the 1851-founded house, and a nod to Villaseñor’s father’s own Ralph Lauren loafers, where clothing serves as an object of class status. As a global citizen who landed in California, Villaseñor reclaims the language of luxury for those it wasn’t originally afforded to by reimagining aspirational dress codes.

Similarly, when Williams joined the LVMH family in 2020, he brought his affiliation to art, music and youth culture to Givenchy, giving the house fresh cultural cachet. Williams introduced cult pieces like the technical <a href="https://www.goat.com/sneakers/silhouette/givenchy-the-tk-360">TK-360 sneaker</a>, collaborated with artists including Josh Smith and graffiti maestro Chito, and selected cultural icons including Bella and Gigi Hadid, K-Pop group aespa and rapper Playboi Carti as new faces of the brand, injecting his own understanding of luxury to a brand that has undergone numerous renovations since Hubert founded his namesake house in 1952.
More recently, Williams says he’s been thinking about beauty a lot, specifically how his vision of it has changed as he’s gotten older. When he showed a standalone Givenchy womenswear collection for FW23, critics saw it as the first clarified presentation of his Parisian woman, but Williams disagrees. “People only really understand things when they’re repeated in front of them,” he says, suggesting the consumer has understood his Givenchy from the start, but perhaps the fashion press has not.
As the role of the creative director grows to encompass everything from seasonal collections to global advertising campaigns, the profile of the ideal candidate evolves alongside it. Both Williams and Villaseñor weave a language of luxury in the post-streetwear era, drawing on their personal experiences to present a new vision of European fashion to the world.

1017 ALYX 9SM CR Leggings 'Black'

1017 ALYX 9SM Collection Logo T-Shrit 'Black'

1017 ALYX 9SM Nylon And Metal Chain Necklace 'Transparent'

Givenchy TK-MX Runner 'Black'

Givenchy Mini 4G Light Backpack 'Black'

Rhude Racing Sneaker 'White Beige'

Rhude Americana Trucker 'Black/Off White'

Rhude Classic Denim 'Black'

Rhude Lightning Frame 'Black'

Rhude Logo Swim Shorts 'Slate Blue'

Matthew Williams and Rhuigi Villaseñor Remake European Luxury in Their Image

For GREATEST 07, Justin Saunders pulls back the curtain on his Montreal-based design studio and creative team.

For GREATEST 07, Justin Saunders pulls back the curtain on JJJJound, his Montreal-based design studio and creative team.

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