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Words by Harriet Quick
Helmut Lang grew up in a mountain village in Austria and his first foray into fashion was making a dress out of a pillowcase. He divulged that to me back in the late 1990s, when his bold New York yellow cab typographic adverts were the talk of the fashion town and men and women ignored household bills to spree on flat front trousers, covet coats and latex vest tops.
Lang changed the way we dressed with his ineffable marriage of steely cool tailoring, cult denim, feathered slips and T-shirts with fetishistic slits at the elbows or armholes. He brought his vision to life with friends and collaborators. Photographers Elfie Semotan, David Sims, Mario Sorrenti and Juergen Teller; artists Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois; the crew at iD magazine and tailor Carlo Brandelli all helped jettison the exceptional brand into cult status. After a slew of business politics, Lang exited to become an artist in 2005.
In an inspired move by the brand, Isabella Burley, has been taken on as Editor-in-Residence, a creative role but not as you knew it. “My role as EIR involves bringing my editorial eye and network of creative talent to influence all departments at Helmut Lang,” says Burley, who is otherwise known as the Editor-in-Chief of Dazed Magazine. “The role is first of its kind and speaks to the pioneering approach of Helmut Lang.
“I still remember being blown away when first seeing the Jenny Holzer truisms fragrance campaign and the Bruce Weber portraits of Louise Bourgeois which served as a campaign,” she reminisces of her first impressions of the label. “Every time I see the red backdrop the image was set against it gives me goosebumps.”
Her first business of order, is bringing back some of those most loved pieces in a RE-EDITION line and is collaborating with Shayne Oliver for her first season. “I really want us to establish a community around Helmut Lang again. And with the first volume of Re-Edition, we wanted to form a foundation of the future volumes to come… to tease out certain ideas and codes of the archive. Every four months, new volumes will be added to the Helmut Lang Re-Edition offering a constantly changing and evolving investigation into the archive.”
The first campaign, shot by Ethan James Green, salutes the subversive spirit and the individualistic heroics that Lang became known for. Consider that slashed T-shirt – it’s no less or more than you think, the very definition of the cult label.
