Helmut Lang

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Helmut Lang (born on March 10, 1956 in Vienna), is an Austrian fashion designer, known for his minimalist, deconstructivist, and often severe designs. The fashion label he created bears his name.

Originally from Vienna where he set up his own fashion boutique in 1979, Lang branched out to Paris in the early 1980s to be closer to the international fashion scene. He became famous for his simple but refined designs, his slim suits in black or white, his denim collection and the use of high-tech fabrics. Lang eventually took the opportunity of his label's growing success and moved his company's headquarters to New York City in 1997. His fashion was sold in upscale department stores and through select retailers as well as in signature Helmut Lang stores around the world. In 1999 Lang entered into a partnership with Prada Group which resulted in the acquisition of the Helmut Lang brand by Prada in 2004 and Mr. Lang's departure from the label in 2005. Prada, however, struggled with the brand and consequently sold it to Link Theory of Japan in 2006. Link Theory then re-launched the Helmut Lang label with new designers in 2007. Mr. Lang who is not involved in the re-launch resides in East Hampton and has referred to new projects in the media but not yet specified any plans.

Contents

[edit] Personal life and History of the brand

Lang was born in Vienna but grew up in rural Austria with his grandmother. Originally, he studied business to become a banker. It is said that he had not been able to find suitable clothing and thus decided to make them himself as an autodidact. And so he switched over to fashion, set up a fashion studio in Vienna in 1977 and opened a boutique named Bou Bou Lang there in 1979 at the age of 23. His clothes were fairly successful in his native Austria, and, after a fair exhibition of his clothes at the Centre Pompidou in Paris initated by the Austrian government, he branched out successfully to Paris in 1986. And yet, after communting back and forth between France and Austria, he eventually withdrew from Paris and returned to Vienna in the late 1980s.

At this time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, minimalist fashion was at its height, with Jil Sander, Giorgio Armani and Helmut Lang himself being very popular and successful. His clothes were made with very sharp lines and careful cuts, creating basic but extremely elegant silhouettes in high quality and often high-tech fabrics. Lang's favorite 'colors' were black and white. His slim men's suits were a favorite among fashionable advertising managers and other creatives of the time. He was compared to Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto for his sometimes austere, intellectual designs.

In 1993, Lang accepted a professorship at 'Modeklasse', the famous department of fashion design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Lang moved to New York in 1997 and subsequently set up his company's headquarters in 142 Greene St. in SoHo in 1998. In New York, he decided in April 1998, three days before his designs were to be presented to a New York audience for the first time, to show his collection through a live internet broadcast to the world. The following season he boldly announced to show his collections not only before New York Fashion Week but also before the Milan/Paris runway shows. As a result, with many American designers following suit, New York Fashion Week was permanently moved up six weeks to herald the established runway shows.

Helmut Lang used to make both a women's and men's line, but kept his collection under a single name and presented both lines in one show. He also introduced an underwear and jeans line as well as later accessories and fragrances, but otherwise preferred to keep the brand unified to solidify its identity and strength.

Mr. Lang resides in East Hampton with his longtime companion in an oceanfront mansion that its former owner, Frederic Seegal, then president of investment bank Wasserstein Perella, sold to him for $15.5m in May 1999.

He is said to have an obsession for German and Austrian noble family coat of arms and apparently owns an impressive collection.

Throughout his career, Lang shied away from interviews or official festivites and disliked being photographed. He even was absent from the Council of Fashion Designers of America awards in 2000, where he was nominated in two categories - (he became Menswear Designer of the Year). He has also remained silent in public about Prada and Link Theory (see below).

[edit] Prada Partnership

In 1999, Milan-based fashion house Prada acquired 51% of the Helmut Lang company in the course of a multi-brand strategy which also included the acquisition of German fashion label Jil Sander.

Despite the quality of the clothes and the slight revival of minimalist fashion in the early 2000s, the Helmut Lang brand did not fare well. Prada decided to cancel the Helmut Lang Jeans license, which had been responsible for more than half of the brand's sales, and intended to develop an in-house accessories line. But neither the new accessories nor the fragrances proved a large success. Mr. Lang is said to have insisted that one of his colognes be produced when a test study by the manufacturer-to-be, Procter & Gamble, strongly suggested to modify the scent. After alleged disputes with Prada Group's CEO Patrizio Bertelli on how the brand should be continued and after Mr. Lang had sold his remaining shares to Prada in October 2004, he left his own label in February 2005 [1]. Lang joined the growing number of designer departures, including Jil Sander from her own label at Prada and Tom Ford from Gucci. However, Mr. Lang has publicly maintained that he had "no problem" with Mr. Bertelli.

After Mr. Lang's departure Prada unsuccessfully tried to continue the collections with an in-house design team. In March 2005, Prada closed down the label's headquarters in SoHo, New York. In September 2005, Prada announced that production of the lines had been halted. By the end of 2005, all that existed of the brand was its name: the design atelier had been closed, the collections had been discontinued and all of the art-inspired Helmut Lang stores had been shut down (with the exception of the Paris location to sell remaining stock). The corporate web site, that used to display pictures of the collections, accessories and perfumes, remained online but no contents could be seen anymore.

[edit] Helmut Lang stores

All of the original Helmut Lang stores have been closed. The last one to close was the Paris location in late 2005.

The company also maintained several stores-in-store in Tokyo, Nagoya, Manhasset and Paris.

[edit] Acquisition by Link Theory

On March 17, 2006, Prada Group announced that, after six loss-making years, Link Theory Holdings (LTH) of Tokyo would be acquiring the Helmut Lang brand for an estimated € 20 million. This came about three weeks after Prada had sold the Jil Sander label to British equity firm Change Capital Partners (CCP). Already in spring 2005, it had been rumored that Prada was trying to sell the label. Prada Group was said to concentrate on its core labels Prada and Miu Miu again. The Japanese holding company LTH, developer of the Theory fashion label in Japan and the US, was said to re-launch the Helmut Lang collections under the direction of a "suitable" designer for the spring/summer 2007 season (presented in fall 2006) in select boutiques worldwide as a “contemporary brand" [2]. The new label was said to be based out of New York City. LTH also owns profitable German fashion house Rosner which it bought in late October 2005 as well as the Joie, PLS+T and Kulson labels [3].

Rumor had it for a while that Russian-born designer Alexandre Plokhov of menswear label Cloak, a former men's pattern maker for fashion house Marc Jacobs and winner of the 2005 Swarovski's Perry Ellis Award for Emerging Talent Menswear, might be the new designer for Helmut Lang. It was never, though, expected that Mr. Lang himself would return to the label that bears his name, although Chikara Sasake, president and chief executive of Link-Theory Holdings Company, gave to understand that if Lang “wants to come back, the door is always open” [4].

[edit] Helmut Lang brand re-launch

In May 2006, it was announced that Michael and Nicole Colovos, an American-NewZealander designer couple that used to design their own L.A.-based denim label Habitual, had been installed by Link-Theory as creative directors for the new Helmut Lang brand. From February 2007 on, select upscale retailers such as Barneys, Scoop NYC or Bergdorf Goodman will carry the spring/summer 2007 Helmut Lang contemporary sportswear collection. The design office has been set up in West Chelsea in New York. The collection, described as "a commercial reduction of [Mr. Lang's] fashion identity" [5], has received quite favorable reviews even though it is clearly not seen as a continuation of the original line. The item prices in the collection will be 20% above those for comparable Theory items and, hence, below the original Helmut Lang prices. Link-Theory expects to generate US-$ 8 mio. in revenues in 2008 and make a profit in 2009 with the label [6]. The company also announced that "over the long term" they intend "to also establish exclusive Helmut Lang shops" [7] in the US, Europe and Japan.

The Helmut Lang web site was re-activated in the end of 2006 and will be fully launched in spring 2007.

Mr. Lang, who resides in Long Island of independent means, is said not to be involved in the re-launch in any way.

[edit] Original fragrances

  • Helmut Lang (womens) - 2000
  • Helmut Lang Pour Homme - 2001
  • Helmut Lang Cuiron (mens) - 2002

[edit] HL-art

In February 2004, Mr. Lang founded HL-art to evaluate potential projects. [8] He has since published excerpts from the projects "Long Island Diaries", "The Selective Memory Series" and "The Top or Bottom Conversation Files" in a number of publications. [9]

[edit] Awards

  • VH-1 Vogue Award Best Menswear Designer of the Year, 1997.
  • “Preis der Stadt Wien für Bildende Kunst” Award, 1997.
  • Pitti Immagine Award - Best Designer of the Nineties, 1998.
  • New York Magazine Best Designer of the Year Award, 1998.
  • CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year, 1999.
  • GQ Designer of the Year, 2004.
  • recognized by Fashion Group International as one of “The Imagineers of Our Time” , 2004.

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../h/e/l/Helmut_Lang_6ca6.html"
In other languages