Pieter Mulier has developed one of the most distinctive design languages in Paris, his Alaïa falling somewhere between organic and futuristic, each gesture as decisive and dramatic as a slashed Fontana canvas.
Here was another electrifying show for the Belgian designer, whose BFF (best fashion friend) Raf Simons mingled with guests before the show on the LED floor laid out at the old Cartier Foundation building, relishing the toasty heat it emitted on a windy, rainy morning in Paris.
The monitors were reflected in the low, mirrored ceiling and broadcast closeup footage of the models’ faces as they strolled out.
“Putting the girls and the beauty at the center,” Mulier told a huddle of editors after the show, also citing a wish to make “clothes that cry.”
“I didn’t want something dramatic, but I did want it to be a mirror of what I feel today,” he shrugged.
That explains the long fringe – suspended from strong stay-up hose – swishing under austere cotton tunics and jackets zipped up the back; the waterfall of bibbed jersey layered over handsome leather coats, and all the slanted, scarf-point skirts — some a lapping triangle of heavy silk; others a lopsided tumble of feathery bits.
The designer’s experimental leanings were well intact, his face-framing, condom-like tubes from last season morphing here into snug, cocoon-like jumpsuits, and two-piece stocking dresses tugged over the shoulders and hips, the cape part tethered to pinkies, the skirts’ stirrups anchored to the heels.
“Everything is pulled and released,” Mulier said. “I wanted it to be romantic, because there needs to be hope.”
The designer coaxed an impressive amount of chic from his elemental silhouettes – ovals for coats, triangles for tops, skirts, capes and even pants, and rectangles for tunics and tabard-like tops. He used only four materials – cotton, python, leather, silk – and only textures for embellishment: tassels, fringe, and pleating.
While most of the silhouettes were enveloping, sex simmered under the surface: a flash of bare thighs between the stay-up hose and the tunics; a bare back and tight jeans viewed through a porthole in the back of those offbeat cocoons, and glimpses of legs through the open sides of coats and the grand ball gowns that closed the show.
To create the latter, Mulier said he retrieved some of founder Azzedine Alaïa’s patterns “where everything is cut like balloons, like air, very difficult to do… They were grand, but they were not theatrically grand. You could see the woman in it.”
Perhaps a little less so in his swaddling cocoons, which resembled those compression blankets meant to help alleviate anxiety.
Loaded with fashion thrills, this show worked a similar magic.
