Last season, I didn’t love Alexander Wang, but I did love the concepts. The pinstripe, the baby bells, the camel–these were all items or ideas that I knew would become important to fashion soon, if not immediately. Camel and baby bells caught on fast. Pinstripe is still yet to emerge, but I feel its presence underneath the surface.

Maybe it was the negative press garnered from his last collection, or simply the desire to move away from trend-heavy pieces. But this season’s Alexander Wang show was entirely new, yet not totally fresh.

The first half of the show was all white–I tweeted that I was sure “clean slate” would pop up in nearly every review written about the collection. But it really did seem like some sort of rebirth–Wang even painted his models hair and eyebrows with streaks of white.

When he did move onto color, it was muted–a sea foam green, a dusty terra cotta, a buttercup yellow–nothing shocking or subversive. Just present. I particularly liked an oversized trench with with what looked like one half of a pair of suspenders attached to the back.

There were plenty of things I would wear, and plenty of things I might actually buy. But was it an out-in-out success? Save for the always stellar soundtrack, the collection lacked the energy you usually feel come through at a Wang show. I think last season was about experimentation, and this season was about getting back to basics. So expect Wang to wow, yet again, for Fall 2011.