Peter Do’s Helmut Lang debut received some sharp reviews. This season should be better. The collection is more confident and less fussy than his first, and as a bonus it had Kirsten Owen, the archetypal Helmut Lang model, in pole position.
One of the criticisms from last time was that Do failed to recapture the atmosphere of a Helmut Lang-the-man show: the feeling of being in the room with the crowd watching the new fashion as it played out. The fact that it is an extremely rare feeling does not make people crave it any less. Do’s former boss Phoebe Philo had the touch, but it’s not something that can be taught. Can a revival ever really hope to recapture that original Helmut Lang feeling? It’s complicated: as Owen himself once put it, when a Vogue reporter asked about Lang’s heyday: ‘It was more a smell than a memory, of raw concrete and hi-fi. Definitely a buzz.”
What Do has going for him is his tenacity. Asked about his reviews, he said: “the last show was a fundamental reset; we spent a lot of time working on those blocks [meaning silhouettes and patterns], and all those blocks for spring became these. I couldn’t be here without doing that first.” He also mentioned the rebuilding of the atelier, and the months of trial and error that went into what he calls his “top story,” of custom-made jackets and coats with seams and darts on the sleeves and from back to front that were all point to the center. “I want people to be able to see from miles away that this is Helmut tailoring,” he said. The cut of those suits is impeccable; tough in a way that is indeed reminiscent of Lang.
Do said he was thinking about protection and projection, and how the two qualities are intertwined. The chin collar of an oversized sheepskin aviator would ward off the cold and also look boss, while the mid-layer garment (to borrow a Virgil Ablohism, who borrowed liberally from Lang) modeled after a bulletproof vest was completely projection – not good during a gunfight, but a useful accessory to accentuate a well-toned torso.
The weakness in Do’s armor could be the literal elevators from the Helmut Archive. For example, the Chinatown bag plaids, whose fashion history stretches back from Lang to Philo’s Celine via Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton, seem designed more for Instagram than for real life. But as Do becomes more confident, he will learn to rely less on them and more on his own tailoring skills.
