In the 1017 Alyx 9SM’s Fall/Winter 2020 collection, creative director Matthew Williams has provided the wardrobe drawing on his autobiography, of his upbringing in Central California, together with his life today, Williams presents a notion of utilitarian glamour, of reality and fakery in one.
‘’This collection is about the blended versions of reality we all live in – both the real and the unreal together. I became acutely aware of how our perception of reality, of one experience, can be so completely different from another’s. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with the artist Ewan Macfarlane on the figures. It was the idea of recreating what a mannequin even means, what their implied actions even do – the figures are half-way between sculpture and retail. In some ways, isn’t that what we are too?’’, he shared.
Western wear, with its curvilinear demarcations and decorations, becomes key for this exploration, a new part of the Alyx lexicon. Diamanté, hand embroidered, its excesses modulated and modified, adds to the shimmering decoration on elegant workwear. Yet decoration never eschews an exploration of structure, with a new view of unstructured tailoring for the brand, together with a sense of traditional formality, of shirts and ties. The combination of the natural and artificial continues in materiality where technical, recycled nylons and garment treated cottons might mimic leather. Real leather masquerades as ostrich and eel while meeting their manmade counterparts, while leopard pattern pony presents the ultimate facade.
©Alyx
