1017 ALYX 9SM

1017 ALYX 9SM was founded in 2015 in New York by Matthew Williams, who had previously been a creative collaborator with Kanye West (on the Yeezy line and Watch the Throne) and was a founding member of the BEEN TRILL DJ-and-clothing collective alongside Virgil Abloh and Heron Preston. The brand's foundational thesis was specific: produce industrial-hardware-driven menswear and accessories with the silhouette discipline of luxury ready-to-wear — the Rollercoaster Belt (with its distinctive roller-coaster-restraint metal buckle) became the brand's first cultural lightning rod. The ALYX vocabulary settled around several specific products: the Rollercoaster Belt (now in multiple metal-finish and material iterations), the Tank Tee, technical mountain-derived outerwear in Italian fabrics, the chest-rig harness adapted as luxury accessory, and the brand's collaborations with Nike (the AAA Air Force 1, the Bertoia, the Hike), Mackintosh, Stüssy, Moncler (the 6 Moncler 1017 ALYX 9SM Genius collection), and Dior (Williams' menswear consulting through 2018). Williams was named creative director of Givenchy in June 2020 and held that role through 2024 while continuing to lead ALYX. The brand is independent and held by Williams. 1017 ALYX 9SM operates a flagship in Milan (Via dell'Orso, the brand's HQ from 2017 onward), Tokyo (Shibuya), Seoul, and a small set of carefully chosen wholesale relationships including SSENSE, MR PORTER, GR8, Dover Street Market, and Antonioli. Few American-founder-led European brands of the 2010s have built such a complete vocabulary at the streetwear-meets-luxury edge.