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MAJA MEHLE.

I applied for £250 to visit the Helmut Lang exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna. My main objective was to examine Helmut Lang’s garments in person and investigate their construction, finishing, and materiality. I was particularly interested in whether garment-making itself functioned as a design language within Lang’s practice, and how garment-construction methods communicated ideas beyond silhouette, styling, or image.

My interest in Helmut Lang is relatively recent. For much of my education and early career, I paid little attention to his work. This was mostly shaped by my own background.

I grew up in Yugoslavia, later Slovenia, where access to fashion was limited, and clothing was relatively homogeneous. If you wanted a pair of jeans or a T-shirt that was different from those worn by everyone else, it often had to be bought or smuggled across the border from Italy or Austria. My initial motivation for studying fashion came instead from designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Mugler, and the fashion houses of Paris and London. Their work represented forms, silhouettes, and possibilities that were absent from everyday life in Slovenia.

Most of my own clothing was inherited from cousins and older siblings. In this context, Helmut Lang’s Austrian background felt geographically and culturally too familiar to seem particularly aspirational. His work lacked the theatre and spectacle that initially attracted me to fashion. I was interested in exaggeration, transformation, and visual impact. Lang’s work appeared restrained, quiet, and uniform, and perhaps too close to home.

Over the past few years, however, I have become increasingly interested in his work through studying photographs of original garments from the 90s found on archive websites, specialist resale platforms, and collectors’ accounts. What initially appeared minimal and basic revealed itself to be highly considered. Construction, proportion, finishing, material innovation, and reduction in details seemed to carry as much significance as the visual appearance of the garments themselves. The more I looked, the more I became convinced that the making of the garment was the design.

For this reason, the principal aim of my visit was simply to see the garments. Photographs can only reveal so much. They conceal information that often interests me most: how something is made, how it is finished, and what technical decisions were made during its construction. I also wanted to be able to discuss Lang’s work from direct experience rather than through photographs alone.

In this respect, the exhibition proved somewhat disappointing. There were relatively few garments on display, and the focus was directed largely towards branding, visual identity, advertising, and the wider Helmut Lang label. While this contextual material was super informative, it offered limited opportunities for the kind of close garment analysis I had hoped for. There was not even an exhibition catalogue.

The most valuable part of the exhibition was a room dedicated to hybrid objects constructed from elastic or knitted bands sewn together in various configurations. Finally, some garments! The bands and straps created graphic lines across the body that resembled bold strokes made with a marker pen. They weren't garments or accessories, but they felt like drawings, diagrams, or three-dimensional sketches drawn on the body.

What interested me most was the way these lines seemed to connect to other aspects of Lang’s practice. Similar graphic structures appeared in the Helmut Lang logo, the floor plans of his New York studio and retail spaces, advertising campaigns, and even the layouts and seating arrangements of his fashion shows. Garment construction, graphic design, architecture, branding, and exhibition design did not appear as separate activities but as different manifestations of the same design language and thinking.

I spent two additional days in Vienna after visiting the exhibition. Initially, this was motivated by disappointment. However, as I wandered through the city, I began noticing traces of Lang everywhere. Zebra crossings, transport systems, signage, architectural details, and graphic elements throughout Vienna started to resonate with the visual language I had encountered in the exhibition and Lang’s work.

Back in London, my colleague Fleet lent me several Helmut Lang garments from his personal collection. Examining these pieces directly provided the close analysis that I had hoped to undertake in Vienna. Looking at construction details and seam finishes revealed further connections between making, graphic, and design thinking.

Although the exhibition did not provide the level of garment-focused research I had anticipated, the visit ultimately expanded my understanding of Helmut Lang’s practice. Rather than locating his significance solely within individual garments, I began to see how his ideas extended across clothing, graphic design, architecture, retail environments, and visual communication. More importantly, the experience reinforced my belief that garment construction should not be understood simply as a technical process. Construction itself can function as a design language capable of communicating ideas and shaping the way we experience clothing.

The findings from this research have been shared through a presentation published on the MA Fashion Making Padlet. Available to MA Fashion students via Moodle, the Padlet has generated more than 11,000 views in less than a year, demonstrating significant engagement with this area of study and supporting discussions around making as a critical form of design thinking.