He grew up in the Austrian Alps and Vienna and became acquainted with the Viennese art scene. He established his own fashion studio in Vienna in 1977, opened a made-to-measure shop in Vienna in 1979. He developed ready-to-wear womens collections from 1984-86 and menswear from 1986. They were part of Paris Fashion Week since 1987.
F/W 2001/2002
An attenuated, urban aesthetic, embodied by subtle mixes of luxury fabrics and post-punk synthetics, dominates Helmut Lang's confident designs. Both his menswear and womenswear are uncompromisingly modern: stark minimalist pieces in somber city shades are combined with harsh metallics and slippery transparent layers, questioning the restrictions of traditional tailored clothing.
S/S 2002
Although Lang's work is avant-garde, he is not afraid to use sharply cut suiting, or have a punklike disregard for accepted fabric use, as cigarette trousers and three-buttoned jackets come in shiny PVC with clingy net t-shirts worn underneath. He enjoys the surprise of such cheap fabrics being lent a certain chic through their combination with their more luxurious counterparts.
F/W 2003/2004
If his stylistic reference points originated touching the past, then his distillation of them is always utterly contemporary. In line with and often ahead of current trends, he honed his skills during the 1980s, contradicting the decade's often overblown characteristics and charming first the Parisian, then the international fashion scene, which was impressed by the modernity of his work. He remains a hero of the cognoscenti, influencing mainstream fashion.
S/S 2004
Lang's emphasis on the importance of innovative textiles is as prevalent in his menswear. He has been at the forefront of a shift in this area, which has gathered momentum during the 1990s. He has pushed for a crossover of fabrics from womenswear and a narrower line, shown in 19th-century cut, three-piece single-breasted suits, more attuned to the times than the big triangular silhouette of the 1980s. His deconstructed close-fit tops with visible seaming and layered angora tank tops over untucked shirts increased his popularity as fashion became tired of its own overpowering dogma in the early 1990s.
F/W 2004/2005
Lang's work continues to maintain a high profile in fashion magazines and the industry. The deceptive simplicity of his clothes, complicated by his constant comparisons of clear and opaque, matte and shiny, silky-smooth and plastic-hard, carried him successfully into the 1990s and enabled him to be part of a movement in fashion toward a redefinition of glamor and beauty in the early 2000s. For the 21st century, calling for a "new sensibility,".
S/S 2005
Not only did Lang shock the fashion world with his change of aesthetic, but he also moved up his spring 2000 show from November to September 1999, the same month he sold a 51-percent stake in his design firm to Prada. In essence, Lang continues to remain predictably cutting edge; he searches for hidden harmony and poetry in the multifarious, often dissonant, realms of everyday experience. Although still striving to merge and reconcile hard and fluid textures, he is now using cashmere, silk, and satin.
He resigned from designing in 2005. His brand is continued unsuccessfully by the Prada group.
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