I think the great thing about fashion is that it's changing all the time and the people in the industry are just kind of crazy enough to kind of go along with the ride because they love it so much my name is Alexander Wang I have a brand here in New York and as of two months ago I was appointed creative director of blaga I started my brand in 2005 I was in school at the time registered I should say uh it was my uh I just finished my sophomore year of college at Parson's and it
was at this moment when I felt that I was ready for a new challenge in a way and um I I just really wanted to kind of get out there and kind of get my hands dirty I guess to put in the simplest term the idea for me in the beginning was always two things it was always to tell a story and to build a connection with a customer and an audience I think if you don't have those two things for me in my opinion you know um it's not worth it there always has to
be a reference to something that I feel there's a where there's a comfort level and and by that I mean you know um you know my roots and kind of pieces that I like are always very heavily rooted in sportswar and this idea of ease and this idea of items that people love to wear and can relate to and you know it doesn't matter if this season we're thinking about our Deco or next season we're thinking about you know I don't know ice hockey each element kind of has to bring itself back into that idea
of classic sportsware there's this idea of elevating the everyday that I that I just I've always been attracted to the sweatshir just immediately kind of you know everyone you know when they think sweatshirt they probably think for the majority you know they're sitting at home watching TV on their couch and throwing on their comfiest pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt you know so um but then you know the idea that you can take that item and that reference and apply to something completely abstract um but still have that connotation and that reference I think is uh
kind I don't know it's interesting you know I think a lot of people um look at me and you know look at my age and they have immediately this perception of the brand you know being you know what it is and um sometimes our customers a lot younger and sometimes our customers a lot older and I think that's what's so great and what inspires me every day is that you know our brand really is much more about a sensibility and an attitude and you know it's not defined by where you live or how old you
are you know what your cultural background is um I think probably the the first um memories I have were probably just going with my mom to the hair salon and having to wait for her and um you know sitting in the waiting area and then you know naturally you're just looking at magazines cuz that's all there is to do and um I just remember one time I I I took I I stole one of the magazines from the hair salon and brought it home with me and I just looked at it over and over and
over again and I probably read that issue probably over a hundred times from that point on I would just start sketching and kind of I wanted to kind of recreate kind of the imagery that I saw and um and then from that point it kind of LED my interest to kind of do more research and see like you know what who were these designers you know where did they study what were they you know what were they doing and where were they designing and then I decided that New York was kind of going to be
the place that was for me and that I was going to start and if it took me somewhere else EV EV later on then you know great but um I wanted it to be my first stepping stone I would say I'm rarely the kind of designer that would say I'm going on this trip and this is going to be what I'm going to dedicate next season to and go from there um it usually starts with a very abstract feeling or reaction to kind of what we've done before or previously and then we build from there
you know we come in every single day and the direction will change probably most likely L and it'll say I saw this napkin and I love the way that it ripped and we should do that on a hem oh wait but I thought we were talking about very clean lines well you know then we need to make the clean line look like the rip lines um or it could be you know I could have this idea that I'm holy into I don't know electronic music and then I could go to this concert and then you
know I don't know be completely enthralled and you know inspired by the opposite the the inspiration process is very organic and it's always a reaction and a dialogue with everyone that I'm working with that I think makes it interesting and then um you know and it pushes and pulls and it goes into a lot of different directions before it ends up on the runway we've always worked primarily with Europe on getting our Fabrics um but we've taken a lot more of a um a customized um approach to developing our fabrics and that process is so
inspiring just the trial and the error aspect of having these very crazy abstract ideas of saying oh let's I don't know cut this up and re embroider it and put it together in a way that looks like hair you know seeing that come back and sometimes it's the most horrendous thing and sometimes it's the most um inspiring and beautiful thing and or sometimes it's such an ugly thing that we want to make it beautiful the fashion is very um is very much like a Melting Pot that is looking at music a lot more it's looking
at art a lot more is looking at you know theater music and musicians are probably one of the most inspiring things for me I think so much of what has happened in fashion can be and should be attributed to music Punk grunge glam rock hip-hop you know all of these style movements um I start from music I'm So Into so many different kinds of music and genres of music that um in my shows it always kind of plays a very important part it can kind of completely change the way that you perceive a show or
a an ad campaign or you know whatever yeah in that sense it's it's it's been a it's been one of the most important things for me the idea of an encore performance um was really you know interesting to me you know I love when you go to a concert and you know you're so revved up by the music and you know the art or the musician is kind of going and going and then the show ends and then everyone you know you hear everyone cheering and it's like this like great moment that this energy in
the room you know and then they come back and they save their their best for last I wanted to take that concept and kind of put it into show for fashion show format so we had you know our show and 35 five looks or whatever and um it ended and everyone thought it was an end and we had Jazelle and Shalom and Frankie and all of them come out and it was a it was a different and it was kind of you know the Encore performance I've always wanted to work with them and I've always
wanted to kind of bring back that moment when they used to do shows together um CU I remember watching backstage videos and you know seeing backstage photos where they would just be hanging out and you know and just being themselves I think that's what I miss a lot sometimes I don't know you know it it still happens but you know kind of seeing that and you know recognizing those those very authentic relationships um that was kind of really where it came from you know I think a lot of people see the industry as something that
is very glamorized it's a lot of hard work it's a lot of behind the scenes that you know until you're working in it you don't realize it takes a lot of people and a lot of work to create what it is you know whatever it is a fashion show an image a magazine you know um and it takes a lot of long hours there's a lot more of a opportunity to put a designer aesthetic into different price points now because the way that the fashion industry has really kind of opened up and grown and [Music]
um for me it's always been about that it's always been about this is the kind of product that I want to design and this is who I want to wear it and and if they can't afford it then it's not doing anything it's you know it's sitting in my showroom so andan it really comes down to Fabrics really and the the embroideries and treatments of things uh cuz you can do something that's very forward and very has a very strong point of view with an aesthetic and um find out ways to kind of you know
deliver it at a very accessible price point I think really the only thing that really separates them now our our stores in a way this price point being on this floor and that price point being on that floor but I think they're also very much changing um the way that they look at things and they look at Brands and it's much more about pairing and aesthetic than it is about you know a price tag I was more interested about seeing people on the street wearing my clothes and when I when I saw that that was
the thing that made me the most happy um but there was you know I think you're immediately thrown into that that ball game of you know okay you're showing on a Runway and you're showing next to this designer and that Designer so the expectations from critics are as of the same in a certain way it's pushed me to do a lot of different things that I probably wouldn't have thought of you know uh as I wanted to progress the fashion shows and evolve the fashion show and the collection for main Seasons it's enabled me to
kind of think about my business in a different way and say okay what are the what are the core elements what are these pieces that I very much still believe in and that maybe shouldn't be put on a Runway but the customer needs and in that tea was born it's not a diffusion line you know it's it's a representative of kind of these everyday Basics that um have the ease of a T-shirt and it started with just cutting so Jersey and now it has it's a full collection it has leather it has tailoring it has
knits um as swim having that element in my business enabled me to kind of push the product that I do show on the runway much more forward I'm proud of all the work that I've done you know cuz it's it's led me to where I am now um it's it's humorous to me when I see kind of the things that I used to do our very first item that create that we created was a sweater with a an inaria on the back of a girl's face smoking which probably wasn't the best message to put out
there on every single sweater and I really thought that was going to be our our piece you know that was going to be like that's our that's what people recognize the brand for um and it lasted two seasons and uh it is no longer in the collection but other than that I look at the collection today and almost every piece that was in my first ready to wear collection is in the collection today in some way shape or form [Music]
