What 1017 Alyx 9SM is known for
Matthew Williams' industrial-luxury lab — rollercoaster buckles and technical darkness, shopped through co-founder Luca Benini's Slam Jam.
<p>Matthew Williams built a luxury house out of hardware. Founded in 2015 and named from private coordinates — Alyx for his daughter, 9SM for 9 St. Mark's Place in New York, 1017 for his own birthday — the label took the buckle of a theme-park rollercoaster restraint, machined it to jewelry grade, and made it the signature of a new industrial luxury: nylon and leather engineered like equipment, dyed black, finished in Italy.</p><p>Williams came up through the backstage of music and streetwear — Lady Gaga's creative team, Kanye West's Donda, the Been Trill collective alongside Virgil Abloh and Heron Preston — and Alyx carried that generation's obsessions into proper manufacturing. The chest rigs, the buckled belts, the technical outerwear: gear as eveningwear, produced with the same Italian factories the heritage houses use.</p><p>The industry ratified the experiment when Givenchy named Williams creative director in 2020; he kept 1017 Alyx 9SM running as his own laboratory throughout. The label remains the purest expression of his idea — that the most honest ornament of this century is functional, load-bearing, and closes with a click.</p>
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Rollercoaster-buckle belts and technical black hardware-wear.
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