His clothes were fairly successful in his native Austria, and, after a fair exhibition of his clothes at the Centre Pompidou in Paris initated by the Austrian government, he branched out successfully to Paris in 1986 and created the label 'Helmut Lang'.

And yet, after communting back and forth between France and Austria, he eventually withdrew from Paris and returned to Vienna in the late 1980s.

At this time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, minimalist fashion was at its height, with Jil Sander, Giorgio Armani and Helmut Lang himself being very popular and successful.

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