The language of clothing: exploring Helmut Lang’s Archive at the MAK

Tomorrow, the MAK in Vienna will unveil one of the most highly anticipated cultural events of the season: Helmut Lang: Séance de Travail 1986–2005. This exhibition offers a comprehensive exploration of the Helmut Lang archive and the legacy of the avant-garde fashion designer who transformed our understanding of clothing, communication, and identity. At a time when the boundaries between disciplines are becoming increasingly blurred, the exhibition introduces Lang’s uncompromising design philosophy to a new generation.

A fashion exhibition built on design philosophy

Located in the museum’s Lower Exhibition Hall and open from December 10th, 2025 to May 3rd, 2026, the project offers unprecedented access to the largest public archive dedicated to Lang’s work. Rather than a traditional fashion exhibition, the MAK is presenting a multi-sensory, mixed-media environment that reflects the way Lang approached fashion — with the mindset of an artist rather than a stylist. 

At its core, the exhibition examines Lang’s radical reinvention of identity between 1986 and 2005: his belief that clothing was not merely an object, but a form of communication operating across images, architecture and urban space.

Reframing the avant-garde fashion designer

Lang’s prescient move to stream a runway show online in 1998—a milestone presented here via archival CD-ROM footage—highlights the visionary mindset that defined his trajectory. Visitors follow the timeline through LED screens and original taxi-top advertisements from the same season, the latter recalling the 1,000 glowing signs that once punctuated the streets of New York and redefined fashion branding.

A partially reconstructed section of the Greene Street boutique presents the retail environment as conceptual architecture, while a curated selection of early store photography reveals how Lang blended minimalism, urban tension and poetic restraint.

Stories behind Helmut Lang’s works

A key installation recreates the atmosphere of Lang’s Séance de Travail shows, featuring a floor-printed seating plan that reflects the unconventional arrangement of guests among artworks and models. Original backstage invitations and over 3,000 digitised lookbook images surround it, allowing visitors to explore each collection interactively.

In the Made to Measure and Perfumery sections, advertising archives highlight Lang’s collaborative authorship. Early mockups of the iconic I Smell You on My Skin campaign, developed with Jenny Holzer, reveal handwritten notes and revisions that emphasize space, silence, and subtle suggestion. Adjacent materials from the Robert Mapplethorpe Estate partnership underscore Lang’s focus on emotion over spectacle.

The Backstage section showcases intimate artefacts, such as Polaroids of fittings, accessory fragments and pattern pieces, which document the hidden labour behind every pared-down silhouette. These rarely seen materials reveal that Lang’s minimalism was not effortless, but rather the product of an intense pursuit of essential form.

More than twenty years after the designer stepped away from his label, Séance de Travail 1986–2005 demonstrates the enduring influence of his work and the significance of the Helmut Lang Archive in the realm of contemporary fashion and cultural memory.

While we await this thought-breaking exhibition project, discover Helmut Lang’s thoughts on materiality, the dialogue between object and space, and the questions that drive his artistic practice in our next conversation.