Courtesy Saint Laurent
We’re often told that we can’t run from our past, and for good reason—few ever succeed in doing so. Since ceding control of his namesake label in 2005, Helmut Lang has broadly veered away from engaging in discussions about fashion publicly. He responds apathetically to interview questions concerning his former domain: “[it’s] something I am not thinking about, and it is a question which I do not have to dwell on”, adamant that his creative life in the field is over.
Whilst the label forays onward under a creative director-in-residence programme, Lang’s focus is now predominantly cast on sculpture. Despite the selective memory he exercises over his own œuvre, the quintessential facets of Lang’s design language remain the same: the ability to abstract both the material of the garments and the body that wore them has always been integral to his signature of pared-back modernity.
Lang’s latest collection of sculptures have been created specifically for Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent Rive Droite concept stores in Paris and Beverly Hills. Comprised of shredded Saint Laurent garments provided by Vaccarello, the fragments are mixed together with a pigmented resin and molded into aluminium to create fleshy-metallic structures that evoke both a primal feeling and the cautiously foreboding sentiment of a dark future. Human fear is often predicated on the reflex of projecting our past onto our future—and that may be the reason behind Lang’s firm, if unsuccessful disavowal of his fashion past.
