LANG, Helmut

Austrian designer

Born: Vienna, Austria, 10 March 1956. Career: Grew up in Austrian Alps and Vienna; became acquainted with Viennese art scene; established own fashion studio in Vienna, 1977; opened made-to-measure shop in Vienna, 1979; developed ready-to-wear collections, 1984-86; presented Helmut Lang womenswear, 1986, and Helmut Lang menswear, 1987, as part of Paris Fashion Week; established license business, 1988; moved several times between Paris and Vienna, 1988-93; professor of Fashion Masterclass, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, from 1993; other lines include underwear, 1994, eyewear, 1995, and jeans, 1997; sold 51-percent stake of company to Prada, 1999; introduced first fragrance, Helmut Lang, and Helmut Lang Parfums flagship store, 2000; launched bath and body lines, 2001. Collections: Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Exhibitions: "Vienne 1880-1939: L'Apocalypse Joyeuse," at the Pompidou, Vienna, 1986. Awards: New York Magazine New York award, 1998; CFDA's Menswear Designer of the Year, 2000. Addresses: Press Office, c/o Michele Montagne, 184 rue St. Maur, F-75010 Paris, France; Helmut Lang New York, 80 Greene Street, New York, NY 10012, USA. Website: www.helmutlang.com.

Publications

On LANG:

Articles

Cressole, Michel, "Une Lancinante Variation En Jersey Zippé," in Libération (Paris), 24 March 1986.

Kaupp, Katia D., "Une Manif Pour Helmut Lang," in Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 29 March 1990.

Blumenberg, H. C., "Der Retter des Einfachen," in Zeit Magazin (Hamburg), 1 March 1991.

Tredre, Roger, "The Maker's Culture: The Wearer's Imprint," in the Independent (London), 9 September 1993.

Mair, Avril, "Designs of the Times," in i-D (London), December 1993.

Mower, Sarah, "Brilliant," in Harper's Bazaar, February 1994.

Spindler, Amy M., "Lang Points the Way to a New Elegance," in theNew York Times, 7 March 1994.

Brampton, Sally, "Langevity," in the Guardian (London), 20 August 1994.

Watson, Shane, "Cool Hand Lang," in Elle (London), September 1994.

Espen, Hal, "Portrait of a Dress," in the New Yorker, 7 November 1994.

Spindler, Amy M., "A Mature Mugler, Demeulemeester, and Lang," in the New York Times, 18 March 1995.

Teller, Jeurgen, "Langfroid," in ArtForum International, October 1995.

Hirschberg, Lynn, "The Little Rubber Dress, Among Others: The Fashion Desgins of Helmut Lang," in the New York Times Magazine, 2 February 1997.

"Helmut Lang," in Current Biography, April 1997.

Spindler, Amy M., "Three With the Touch to Inherit the Crown," in the New York Times, 18 October 1997.

Kaplan, James, "A New Yorker by Design: Helmut Lang…," in New York, 27 July 1998.

Horyn, Cathy, "New Wrinkles at Lang and Sui," in the New York Times, 11 February 2000.

Seabrook, John, "The Invisible Designer: Helmut Lang," in the New Yorker, 18 September 2000.

"A Delicate Balance: It's a Balancing Act," in WWD, 16 February 2001.

"Helmut Lang Creates First Body Line," in Cosmetics International, April 2001.

Deeny, Godfrey, "Helmut Lang: The Spark of a New Look," available online at Fashion Windows, www.fashionwindows.com.

"Interview with Helmut Lang," online at www.ocf.berkeley.edu.

At a moment of conflicting demands, people want modernity and identity, street style and savviness. Fashion now is fast, downbeat, and relentlessly urban. Because of that, I have been developing a particular vision, what I call a nonreferential view of fashion. It is all about today. It has to do with my personality, with my life, and with the idea that quality doesn't go out of style every six months.

Working effectively with fashion means adding pieces to a continuing story, evolving fluently year after year. The basis of really effortless style is found in minimal exaggeration. A perfect economy of cut and exacting attention to finish is sometimes lost to the careless eye, which gives it precisely the sort of anonymous status that the truly knowing admire. If you have to ask, you don't get it, in either sense. Downbeat elegance is founded in precise proportions and clean tailoring; balancing hi-tech fabrics with real clothing. The result is fashion put into a different context to become something known, unknown.

—Helmut Lang

An attenuated, urban aesthetic, embodied by subtle mixes of luxury fabrics and post-punk synthetics, dominates Helmut Lang's confident designs. Both his menswear and womenswear are uncompromisingly modern: stark minimalist pieces in somber city shades are combined with harsh metallics and slippery transparent layers, questioning the restrictions of traditional tailored clothing.

Although Lang's work is avant-garde, he is not afraid to use sharply cut suiting, or have a punklike disregard for accepted fabric use, as cigarette trousers and three-buttoned jackets come in shiny PVC with clingy net t-shirts worn underneath. He enjoys the surprise of such cheap fabrics being lent a certain chic through their combination with their more luxurious counterparts, and often backs silk with nylon to give a liquid, shifting opacity to column dresses and spaghetti-strapped slips.

For all the deconstructed glamor of his clothes, they remain essentially understated, drawing their interest from the layering of opaques and transparents in sinuous strong lines, rather than unnecessary details that might dull their impact. Even the sexuality of his figure-hugging womenswear is tempered by a nonchalance and apparent disregard for the impact the clothes have. This parallels the growing sense of independence and confidence of women over the years Lang has been designing.

If his stylistic reference points originated touching the past, then his distillation of them is always utterly contemporary. In line with and often ahead of current trends, he honed his skills during the 1980s, contradicting the decade's often overblown characteristics and charming first the Parisian, then the international fashion scene, which was impressed by the modernity of his work. He remains a hero of the cognoscenti, influencing mainstream fashion.

The simplicity of the cut of a Lang garment is deceptive. The slim mannish-shaped trousers he favors for women may be timeless enough, but the surprise of rendering them in hot red stretch synthetic in 1992 and creating an urban warrior look with halter top and boned breastplate meant they appealed to the stylishly unconventional, who were not afraid to slip from day to night, informal to formal, disregarding the normal restrictions of what is appropriate to wear.

Lang's emphasis on the importance of innovative textiles is as prevalent in his menswear. He has been at the forefront of a shift in this area, which has gathered momentum during the 1990s. He has pushed for a crossover of fabrics from womenswear and a narrower line, shown in 19th-century cut, three-piece single-breasted suits, more attuned to the times than the big triangular silhouette of the 1980s. His deconstructed close-fit tops with visible seaming and layered angora tank tops over untucked shirts increased his popularity as fashion became tired of its own overpowering dogma in the early 1990s.

Lang's work continues to maintain a high profile in fashion magazines and the industry. The deceptive simplicity of his clothes, complicated by his constant comparisons of clear and opaque, matte and shiny, silky-smooth and plastic-hard, carried him successfully into the 1990s and enabled him to be part of a movement in fashion toward a redefinition of glamor and beauty in the early 2000s. For the 21st century, calling for a "new sensibility," Lang began to use classical natural fabrics such as satin and tweed while continuing with his characteristic shapes but changing his fabrics—such as rubberized lace replaced by real lace. Not wanting to confuse a subtle touch with sheer softness, Lang admitted that his change in fabric choice has something to do with romance and love, with "not being afraid, being able to live these different needs and different moods."

Not only did Lang shock the fashion world with his change of aesthetic, but he also moved up his spring 2000 show from November to September 1999, the same month he sold a 51-percent stake in his design firm to Prada. In essence, Lang continues to remain predictably cutting edge; he searches for hidden harmony and poetry in the multifarious, often dissonant, realms of everyday experience. Although still striving to merge and reconcile hard and fluid textures, he is now using cashmere, silk, and satin.

In 2000 and 2001 Lang ventured into fragrance and skincare products for both men (cologne, deodorant, shower gel, aftershave) and women (perfume, shower gel, body lotion). An eponymous fragrance was released in the fall of 2000, which coincided with the opening of a flagship perfumery, Helmut Lang Parfums, in New York City. After Helmut Lang came a complementary fragrance, Velvonia, which can be worn separately or along with other Lang body products. Helmut Lang fragrances and skincare products are available at Lang Parfumeries in Munich, Vienna, Hong Kong, and New York, as well as in high-end department stores worldwide.

—Rebecca Arnold;

updated by Christine Miner Minderovic