Last we heard of Matthew M. Williams, back in December, the American designer had just announced his departure from Givenchy following the thought-provoking (if less headline-making) news that he had secured an investment deal for his Alyx label with Adrian Cheng, the Hong Kong-based entrepreneur. This week, quietly and intimately hosting previews in his Paris apartment, Williams revealed exactly what the new Alyx will look like moving forward.
The designer and Cheng, now the label’s majority owner, had outlined their plans to accelerate the label’s growth. They spoke of freestanding stores, betting on DTC channels, and maximizing drops with pop-ups and other events. They moved the label’s headquarters away from Italy, which had been a crucial part of its storytelling as this “American designer making luxury items in Italy,” to Paris, where Williams has been based since he took the job at Givenchy. But they hadn’t explained how exactly they’d reshape Alyx’s product until now. “We’ve had a really great reaction to the collection, especially because we really brought down the prices this season from the past decade,” said Williams.
The new Alyx is significantly more accessible than it had been historically. A sweatshirt came down from $600 to around $250, a leather jacket from $3,000 to $900, and the denim from $700 to $450. “These kinds of prices allow more stores to buy deeper and kids to be able to buy the brand, which is great,” said Williams, “hence why the collection is smaller than normal, it’s a transition.”
A transition because, as Williams said, he was used to working with “the most expensive fabrics and suppliers in the world in Italy.” Now he’s been working to offer the same a similar level of product but using a different supply chain. “It’s a different way of making clothing than I’ve done in the last decade,” he said. When asked if there was a takeaway from this exercise he continued: “Every single season is a new challenge, and it’s never easy, I can’t synthesize it into one takeaway.”
It makes sense for Williams to make Alyx more accessible, and one wonders why he hadn’t done this before. Williams has a legion of fans currently obsessing over this drop in his Instagram comments. They are who this is for, after all: “We don’t need another brand that’s just grinding every penny out of the customer and the environment, and all these clothes that are just about having beautiful models with the propaganda of logos around the world; that’s not why I started doing fashion,” he said. “I like to think there are people that actually notice that and connect with the brand, because it actually means something and it’s personal and it’s connected to culture in a real way, because sometimes when you get in these big corporations, it’s like they’re not even aware of that; it’s just an Excel sheet on the computer.”
Williams has streamlined his collection’s proportions and is starting fresh with a line of Alyx essentials: A slim, high-break tailored jacket (one of the main tailoring stories of this men’s season), a lightly down-filled gilet, roomy short-sleeve button downs, and a nice pair of jeans in a classic, soft wash. These are the building blocks for Williams’s next act, made exclusively for those who care.
