If you’ve been following Alexander Wang for more than a season or two, odds are that many of the bags he sent down his Fall 2015 runway this week will look familiar to you. That’s not just because they were mostly re-proportioned takes on two of his most popular shapes, the Rocco and Emile, but because they were black, as all of Wang’s most popular bags have started out being.
Few contemporary designers are as closely associated with a color as Wang is with black, and his show was bathed almost entirely in the color this season, including the bags. They were also wearable and consumer-minded in a way that Wang’s runway bags usually aren’t; he tends to go with something high-minded and conceptual for the runway while waiting to unveil his more commercial bags through less glamorous avenues.
I don’t know what Wang’s accessory sales are like, but I’d guess they’re mostly strong but not growing as quickly as they were when the Rocco was a new hit. A more consumer-oriented accessories approach on the runway might be a way to churn up some interest, but the real fix for the problem is to create a hot new bag. Wang is well capable of that, but it’s not in this bunch of old favorites.
[Images via Vogue UK]
