Consider Pieter Mulier's latest effort for Alaïa as a powerful calling card for wool and for widescreen creative expression within self-defined limits.
The Belgian designer challenged himself to create a collection using a single merino yarn, which is surprising considering that the clothes parading through Alaïa's boutique on Rue de Marignan looked like denim, velvet, shearling, you name it.
They were also minimalist, feminine and very Alaïa, exalting feminine curves without resorting to attachment. In fact, most of the clothes were built around circular shapes, from the looped fringes that opened the display to the sexy evening dresses that rolled over the bust and stomach like an expertly peeled orange.
Mulier revisited his jeans with curved seams and rounded the dramatic cuffs into cabbage-sized balloons of fluff.
The designer is definitely moving forward in the Paris-based house and reading the room more accurately.
“I wanted to get away a little bit from that overly sexualized woman that we had in the past,” she told a small group of reporters after the show. “I like to call it a new kind of luxury. Everyone talks about quiet luxury, but this is quiet luxury. “There is a thread.”
Congratulations to Alaïa's historic Italian suppliers, one of fabrics and the other of knitwear, for taking on the challenge of transforming merino (with hints of viscose and nylon) into animal prints, suede-like surfaces and skirts with seamless godets that looked like modern cousins. to the founder's beloved knit skater dresses.
And congratulations to Mulier for achieving so much enthusiasm, sophistication and elegance in a single thread, clean shapes and minimalist decoration, which goes to the essence of Azzedine Alaïa's gift for fashion.
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