NewYork fashion weekForget logomania. Pre-Fall'14 found Alexander Wang in a more circumspect mood, as he traded in the brandemonium of last season for a relatively somber meditation on the way things are put together and the way things fall apart. Deterioration was the more visible of the two themes, what with items like Wang's wool jacket with an eroded-looking collar, a camel cashmere sweater that peeled away in the back, and his very cool acid-print shirts, which seemed to have been bitten through by some particularly angry and tenacious moths. "Coming together," meanwhile, got its most interesting riff in shirts that wrapped around the hip, apron-style, and sculpted tees and dresses in which the excess selvage had been sewn into a Mohawk-style fringe. The fringe was one Western element here; more were to be found in Wang's footwear, which hybridized cowboy boots and brogues. Gaucho pants, too, put another accent on the style of the frontier.

Overall, however, this was a collection heavily indebted to menswear of the urbane, stockbroking kind, with an emphasis on button-downs, suiting materials, overcoats, and that classic white-collar palette of neutrals. Perhaps all the deterioration at play was Wang's way of suggesting that our global Masters of the Universe are coming apart at the seams. There was sporty outerwear that looked—purposefully—like garbage bags, too. Occupy fashion! Occupy fashion? That interpretation seems a stretch. But apropos of this collection, it's safe to say that Wang's stock will stay on the rise.

Fashion Brand: Alexander Wang | www.alexanderwang.com

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