Alexander Wang

NEW YORK, September 6, 2007
By Meenal Mistry
When model Iekeliene Stange arrived at her Alexander Wang fitting the week before the show, the enchantingly off-kilter beauty walked up to a look intended for her and proclaimed it "exactly what I want to wear." For Wang, that moment is the fashion equivalent of a slam dunk. Simply put: The 23-year-old designer loves to make cool, chic clothes that cool, chic girls love to wear.

Wang said he had been thinking about the film Working Girl and Giorgio Armani's eighties-era power dressing. "It's about a humble girl who came from nothing, making a living," he explained. But his real muse is his customer, particularly the insouciantly ultra-stylish being he calls the M.O.D. (Model Off-Duty). This time around that included the show's stylist, semiretired runway star Erin Wasson.

The result could best be described as a refined vision of what might happen if a pack of catwalkers plundered the career floors at Bloomingdale's circa 1987 and wove the loot into their own wardrobes. Naturally, it would mean looks like an oversized gray blazer with sleeves jammed up to the elbows over a wife-beater and shredded cutoffs, or a lace-trimmed bustier paired up with the trousers that once partnered with that aforementioned jacket. Beyond those easy-to-fathom ensembles were polished dresses cut in menswear wools and shirting along with casual wardrobe essentials, like the elusive just-right, thin heather-gray T-shirt and terrific, slouchy light denim jeans. These soon-to-be-staples made up for a few looks that should only ever be worn by professional mannequins.