of the nine-tees writes Sarah Mower in vogue.com. I would say he is my favorite designer and I miss him. He never disappointed, always ramped up his agenda. He was so much fun, a lot of his styles look good today. I have still have a leather jacket I wear every winter. When I arrived in New York in 1997 I noticed all the taxis had Helmut Lang advertising on their top. How delighted I was. I grew up with Helmut Lang in Munich. He was well known in Germany way before and moved then to Paris before he landed in New York.
What he achieved in the nineties is so little written about, so far beyond the existing reach of the Internet—and was so elusive, even at the time—that it’s hard to capture its enormity. What he did went far beyond inventing a casual-formal, elegant-subversive uniform—things to wear every day that emitted confidence, centeredness, and sexiness. It was more than that. It was the coming of age of the cool.
Yes cool he was and the news of his departure from the label were received sadly. What should I wear and my friends? We all went to his sale and store closure in New York in 2005. The coolest members of New York’s creative class were present.
It was a coded disguise, a knowing way for the cool of both sexes to hide their origins in plain sight.
