“Being Modern,” According to Helmut Lang, “Is About the Right Mix of Things.” Read Vogue’s May 2000 Profile of the Designer Here

This question becomes all the more pointed this month, as Helmut Lang launches the aforeplugged perfumes on, of all places, the Internet. It’s true that PCs have come a long way, but the scratch-’n’-sniff port has yet to be invented. So why sell scent that can’t be smelled? The answer, of course, is that the launch of Helmut Lang perfumes is, among other things, a launch about a launch. It pushes to a logical extreme the principle that consumption is driven by brand awareness—in this case, “Helmut Lang”—rather than by product awareness. As Richard Gluckman, the architect behind Lang’s stores and residences, observes, “The Internet launch is at one remove from the empirical experience.” In other words, you are invited to take leave of your senses, literally.

This isn’t the first time that Lang has tested the expectations of the public and the industry. He was the first designer to transplant a fashion house from Europe to America, in early 1998; once here, he became the first designer of note not to participate in the New York collections but, rather, to show his work on CD-ROMs and on the Net, thereby challenging the notoriously technophobic industry to get with it. Then, in summer 1998, he decided to stage his spring ’99 collection in advance of the European shows, a breathtakingly bold move that triggered a frenzy of rescheduling by other, far more established New York designers (Calvin Klein, et al) that left the sacrosanct fashion calendar looking as distressed as, well, a pair of Helmut Lang distressed jeans.

Ah, the jeans. Was there ever a cheekier act of fashion brinkmanship than charging designer prices for paint-spattered, dirt-colored denims? And yet, as ever, the industry stumbled gratefully in his wake. Lang’s friend Kim Stringer, fashion director of Japanese Vogue, says that on a Tokyo Sunday she must have seen 20 or 30 pairs of these faux-Pollock numbers walking around. “I actually just bought a pair myself,” she owns up apologetically. “What can I say? They’re the right length, right color, and the smudge of gold is in the right place. It’s really elegant.”