Alexander Wang has never met a sport motif that he didn't love. Over his label's soaring seven-year life, the New York-based designer has mined every corner of the locker room floor for dynamic design detail and body-conscious inspiration. Now that he's doing double duty as creative director at Balenciaga, however, his sports fused tendencies are finding loftier places to huddle. The scuba suit, for instance, was sliced into miniscule hip hugging dresses with net overlays, while sporty fetish mesh found its way onto the straps of Martingale-tuxedo jackets and technical netting punched through jersey floor grazing gowns. When Wang wasn't slashing his hems to vertiginous heights, he worked around a lean, man-style pant silhouette; for which both will require an equally perfect set of legs to pull off. While there was embellishment on sexy sleeveless scuba tops in the form of heavily beaded breast plates, the overall effect on Wang's spring runway was clean, perfectly tailored and glowingly precise. The clash of high class and off-duty sport was beautifully executed in this collection, offering an obvious reflection of what this American designer has gleaned from his time with the petites mains in Paris.
Photography: Jason-Lloyd Evans
