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An old article I found. It's quite long, but you can read the rest in the link.
The Invisible Designer: Helmut
Lang
From The New Yorker
September 18, 2000
About four years ago, in a men's store
called Camouflage, in Chelsea, I tried on some trousers. They were
perfectly ordinary-looking thin-wale corduroys, and yet something
about them was different: the fabric was softer, the color was slightly
subtler than basic black. The pants were unpleated, the rise was
high, the leg slim. There was a loop for the button over the rear
pocket, and an inner waist button-details you don't often find on
sportswear. Was this fashion? Perhaps, but it was hidden; only I
would know. The label was inside, too, small and not at all logomaniacal--just
the words "Helmut Lang" in black on white. It seemed intended to
evoke the "tickets" you find inside bespoke suits from made-to-measure
tailors. The pants cost a hundred and twenty dollars--not bad, as
designer clothes go. I bought them.
This encounter occurred during my quest to shed
the preppy uniforms I'd been wearing in the fifteen years since
college--a tux for formal occasions, a suit for church and funerals,
a blue blazer and tailored slacks for looking "smart," a polo shirt
and khakis for going out on weekends--and to find a more casual
style, one that was better suited to the identity I was imagining
for myself. (Clothes, of course, are not so much about who you are
as who you want to be.) I had discovered the melancholy truth that
men everywhere have learned as they try to master the new casual
style at the office: dressing casually actually requires that a
man take fashion more seriously than dressing formally does. The
new casual, like the old casual, is supposed to give an appearance
of ease, of comfort with yourself. But, unlike the old casual, the
new casual is all about status. "Casual Power," a recent style guide
by Sherry Maysonave, describes a hierarchy with six different levels
of casual attire: Active Casual, Rugged Casual (also called "outdoorsy"),
Sporty Casual, Smart Casual (or "snappy"), Dressy Casual, and Business
Casual. This may be the most depressing thing about the casual movement:
no clothing is casual anymore.
Helmut Lang, the Austrian-born designer, seemed
to understand exactly what I needed--a uniform for the new casual
world. I bought some more of his clothes: a ribbed cotton sweater
that didn't stretch like my other cotton sweaters; a few pairs of
khakis, which had a pleasingly crisp finish; a denim shirt; a woollen
sweater in a beautiful straw color; and a pair of jeans. They were
intelligent clothes, designed for a maximum number of situations,
both work and play, which increasingly seem to be performed in the
same outfits.
But there was also a deceptive aspect to my new
uniforms. They appeared to be casual, but they were not, and I knew
they weren't. The designer seemed to be playing off this stealthy
quality by hiding certain nonfunctional fashion elements inside
the clothes, such as the faux drawstrings inside the waistband of
otherwise totally ordinary chinos. This hidden streak extends to
the way the clothes are presented. The Helmut Lang store in SoHo,
which was designed in close collaboration with Richard Gluckman,
a New York-based architect of galleries and museums, violates the
most basic principle of retail design: you are supposed to be able
to see the merchandise. Here the clothes are concealed from view
when you walk in--enclosed inside alcoves in the middle of the store.
Hiding, it seems, is part of who Helmut Lang is.
Hoping for a glimpse of the man whose name
was inside my clothes, I attended this year's American Fashion Awards,
which took place at Lincoln Center in June. Polly Mellen, a longtime
arbiter of American fashion, was at a buffet supper preceding the
awards, scanning the big white tent for that sleek, seal-like shape
that she said she found so enchanting-Helmut Lang's head. "Where
are you, Helmut, where are you?" she called out. "You are our glamour
boy. You have to come."
Lang, who is forty-three years old, had been nominated
for all three of the evening's major awards--for womenswear, menswear,
and accessories--an honor never before bestowed on any designer.
He moved his business from Paris to New York in 1997, and this spring
he joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America. The C.F.D.A.,
which organized the awards ceremony, was happy to count as one of
its own the designer whose utilitarian, austere, sportswear-inspired
aesthetic was widely copied during the nineties, and became the
dominant style of the decade: minimalism. These honors were a way
of recognizing his influence, which is likely to increase--Lang
recently formed a partnership with the Prada Group--as well as a
way of welcoming him to the club.
Tommy Hilfiger was in the tent, shaking hands
and flashing his toothy, sideways grin. ChloÎ Sevigny came in wearing
a Helmut Lang organza skirt. Elizabeth Hurley and Claudia Schiffer
appeared, looking very eighties, both in gorgeous, shimmery Valentino
gowns with ruffles around the bosom. There is nothing restrained
about Valentino--elegance and beauty come before comfort and function.
"Too fussy," pronounced Polly Mellen, continuing her search for
Helmut Lang.
But Lang was nowhere to be found. It seemed he
had decided to stay in his SoHo headquarters, where he was working
on his spring, 2001, menswear collection. (Fern Mallis, the C.F.D.A.'s
executive director, received word from Lang's P.R. agency about
an hour before the event began, and said she was "flabbergasted.")
As the news spread that Lang was not going to appear at the party,
the festive spirit began to leak out of the tent. There was a feeling
that Lang might not want to be a member of the club, after all.
Lang lost the first big award of the evening,
Accessory Designer of the Year, which went to the team of Richard
Lambertson and John Truex. But he won the next one--Menswear Designer
of the Year. When his name was announced, many in the audience,
not yet aware of his absence, expected a rare sighting of the man
himself, and there was an audible groan as Ingrid Sischy, the editor-in-chief
of Interview, appeared out of the darkness and mounted the
podium, where she solemnly accepted the award for Lang, whom she
thanked for "changing the rules in American fashion." The line did
not go over well with the crowd, which included most of the rulemakers.
(Cathy Horyn, the Times fashion critic, was sitting next
to Oscar de la Renta and his entourage, and later wrote that de
la Renta repeated "Changed American fashion?" in an incredulous
tone.)
The competition for the evening's most prestigious
award, Womenswear Designer of the Year, was widely thought to be
between de la Renta, who first achieved fame as a society designer
in the eighties, and Lang. (The third nominee was Donna Karan.)
It was a contest between excess and restraint. When de la Renta
won, to wild cheering, it seemed like another sign that the eighties
were back in business.
There was a feeling among the people I spoke to
after the awards that this time Helmut had gone too far. "We all
have to do things we don't want to do sometimes," said AndrÈ Leon
Talley, the editor-at-large of Vogue. Anna Wintour described
Helmut's decision as "a mistake." "If he had been out of the country,
maybe, but he was just downtown. I realize he was working," she
said, with mock reverence. (Part of the mystique that surrounds
Lang derives from the intensity with which he approaches his work,
and his Germanic attention to detail. He works "like a wild man,"
says the artist Jenny Holzer, his friend and sometime collaborator.)
Still, Wintour went on, "If I had known he wasn't coming, I would
have called him. It was discourteous not to turn up."
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sometimes i feel holding back posting something as i can either be emotional, passionate or confrontational, so i lurk or say less words. but this thread struck a chord. 
ve!
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