Alexander Wang, Sharaya J, and Solange Knowles pose backstage at the Alexander Wang X H&M Launch on October 16, 2014 in New York City. — Alexander Wang, Sharaya J, and Solange Knowles pose backstage at the Alexander Wang X H&M Launch in New York. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty for H&M

Alexander Wang launches his H&M range with 90s R&B and front-row stars

This article is more than 9 years old

Designer’s long-awaited sportswear collection for the high-street chain launched at the Fort Washington Avenue Armory in New York. There was glitter. There were abs. There was Missy Elliott

Having just unveiled a heavily sportwear-themed collection for H&M that in the words of Jezebel, makes you look like a funky scuba diver, Alexander Wang chose one of New York’s most illustrious sporting venues to launch it. Usually a track-and-field facility, on Wednesday night the Fort Washington Avenue Armory allowed its interior to be camped up for an evening that incorporated a fashion show, pop-up shop and gig by Missy Elliott.

Arriving so far north in Manhattan that some fashionistas were getting the bends, the black-clad hordes were ushered upstairs to an arena decked out in black sparkly carpet, over which was hung a cube of screens bearing the designer’s name and H&M’s logo. An athletics track surrounded tall black wooden structures and a couple of trampolines. The guests milled around drinking champagne to a soundtrack of 90s hip-hop and R&B while models of the moment including Hanne Gaby Odiele stalked among them, clad in looks from the entirely monochrome Wang collection – abs-baring tops, grey stripy leggings, puffa jackets and neoprene coats.

Model Tyson Beckford poses backstage at the Alexander Wang X H&M Launch on October 16, 2014 in New York City Photograph: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for H&M

After the audience had taken their seats on bleachers, having first picked up a black foam Alexander Wang-branded boxing glove, a riff on the pointing fingers waved at sporting events (and by Miley Cyrus), the front-row posse made their appearance: Eddie Redmayne (wearing a black sweatshirt from the collection), Jessica Chastain, Dakota Fanning, Solange and Mary J Blige. Having loaned some A-list lustre to the budget-priced threads, the show was at last ready to begin. First a clutch of dangerously chiseled young men propelled themselves from trampolines and flipped atop the huge wooden boxes, parkour-style, and then the models emerged, strutting around the running track in body-conscious clothes suitable, as Wang claimed, for the street, the gym or the club. To underline the point, the outfits were accessorised with hockey sticks, masks, basketballs and black stripes on naked arms, backs and shoulders which at first looked painted on, but on closer inspection proved to be bands of some elastic-like material. Plenty of garments had “Wang” emblazoned across, H&M clearly unconcerned that the word is slang for penis in many of their most lucrative territories.

The Alexander Wang x H&M fashion show Photograph: Benjamin Lozovsky/BFAnyc.com/REX

The show, which was not short on drama, concluded with an erupting glitter cannon, a standing ovation by Mary J Blige, and a victory lap by a beaming Wang. As the DJ played a selection of tunes including Kanye West’s New Slaves, which namechecks Wang somewhat critically, but which was played as though it was an unabashed big-up, the audience swarmed onto the catwalk and was inexorably drawn to the backstage area. Behind a curtain, a shop selling the collection had been set up. Given that H&M’s designer collections usually inspire hours of queueing by fashion die-hards and vanish from the stores in about half an hour (to return, at stratospheric prices, on eBay later the same day), it’s not surprising that the shop had an air of barely controlled hysteria, as fashion people expertly stripped the racks of the headline pieces. Perhaps slightly the worse for drink by this stage, even your correspondent was not entirely immune to the frenzy, bagging a black neoprene biker-style jacket for $99, undeterred by the fellow shopper who counseled kindly “You know that neoprene’s impossible to clean?”

The Alexander Wang X H&M show Photograph: Randy Brooke/Getty Images for H&M

Purchases spirited away to the cloakroom, the night finished with a gig by Missy Elliott. Though her best records are sublime, as a live performer she can be frustrating to say the least, and even tonight kept stopping the show, first to exort everyone to put their phones away, then to battle through the crowd to one side of the room and then the other in search of the night’s most ardent Missy fans. Still, it was a treat to hear Get Ur Freak on and Work It again, and Wang, who came onstage to dance to Lose Control, showed that he is a nifty mover as well as a designer. Tonight was his night, a collision of music, celebrity and fashion destined to propel both the designer and H&M into the commercial stratosphere.