Alyx. Spring 2021 RTW - New York

(Images:  Alyx.  All credit)

Matthew Williams, like Virgil Abloh (of 'Off White' fame) and Heron Preston are, in their rapid incline into the fashion industry, relatively new comers, starting off as a collaborative team behind the now defunct Been Trill street wear brand.  The process of how they rose to fame is an aesthetically inspiring chapter to the many thousands of designer hopefuls via the social media relay loops, in a vain hope of capturing the essence of the trios rise to stardom.  Except the claim to fame holds an uncanny script, that in a matter of six years with their individual brands already established, Abloh has attached himself to Louis Vuitton and Williams is about to start with Givenchy as their new creative director.  Rebounding off their glossed up street wear tailored aesthetics has been a rare feat, at the same time striking a resounding cord globally, more so Abloh with his Off White hashtag presence.  Igniting the millions of buyers from China and Japan to buy up his logo'ed styles, with Williams closely following behind.

As a prelude to working with an established luxury fashion brand such as Givenchy,  Williams has showed that he can remove the street wear bias from his label Alyx, while incorporating the more tailored of looks.  This morphing over from yesterdays street styles to refinement, as a promotional cue, once again shows his focus in setting down a desire for a higher position in the fashion world.   To which Alyx's styles have sharpened dramatically from his 2017 shows onward, doing away with the earlier avant garde experimentation ala Gvasalia of Vetements inspiration and fast tracking to a more crafted lineation of looks - whilst inserting the 2018, 2019 trend of blazers and coats, has paid off.

Yet, it is hard to call Williams a master designer, there is no doubt about his warp speed rise to fame, but it was Heron Preston who was William's cohort with Been Trill who offered a decree in 2019, saying that he, Abloh and Williams are like the Japanese designers Yojhi Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo who, in the early 1980s, reworked Parisian couture to their tune.  However, the comparisons are simply not the same, being the fact that there was no social media hype in the 1980s and mastery is a hard and painful slog.  You don't rewite history, you learn from it.

For Alyx Spring 2021 showing for New York Fashion Week, lookbooks have been all the play, as is COVID-19 which is showing no respite in slowing down.  With a 2nd wave pandemic all but a certainly for the Northern Hemisphere as winter looms, after the eager rush to reopen for Spring/Summer throughout Europe and America, it has had dire consequences.  Any hope for a return of the September Paris runway, maybe a another disappointment for the industry reliant on the glamor of Paris Fashion Week, with France now leading Europe in its 2nd wave of infections.  The hard lesson?  Adjustments are the key as is the mantle of designers who have to weather the storm.