Helmut Lang AW98 Astro Biker Pants
A bottoms piece from Helmut Lang's archive.
The Astro Biker Pants from Helmut Lang’s Fall/Winter 1998 collection share a DNA with the Painter Jeans from the same season. Cut from cotton with articulated paneling at the knee, the trousers borrowed their logic from motorcycle gear. The shaped knee, the slightly tapered leg, the suggestion that the body wearing them might be moving at speed even while standing still. Lang had been incorporating utilitarian and industrial references since the early 1990s, but the FW98 collection made those references structural rather than decorative. The engineering came from motorcycle culture: the articulated knee joint, the way the fabric moved with the leg rather than against it. Applied to the silhouette of a dress trouser, the result looked like something a courier might wear to a gallery opening. Lang never explained whether that was the point.