Fashion house ALAÏA presented their Winter Spring 2023 Collection, that finds complexities in simplicity, and celebrates contradictions. Designer Pieter Mulier explores the brand’s codes rooted in contradictions, and tension between control and release. The collection was inspired by haute couture elements, and it fuses two opposing principles in single garments, rigorous tailoring and the freedom of flou.
“An innately Alaïa iconography is exalted, explored. Stretch-jersey pieces are honed to the essential, precisely reengineered to function as a second skin, leggings, draped skirts, coeur-croisé tops. Skin leads to leather: mouton, raw-edged, unlined, is used to craft outerwear and separates that combine sophistication with the spontaneous gesture of materiality, laid directly against the body. Again, enigmatic – in a trompe l’oeil play, crocodile is translated to a three-dimensional jacquard, chenille can pretend to be fur.
In a fashion typical of Alaïa, the insides of garments – their innate structure, demarcations of creation and process – become a new form of decoration.
Challenging rules and restriction, the ‘wrong’ side of denim is used to provide contrast. A fretwork of leather, like a cage bound in metal, opens windows onto the woman beneath. Challenging rules and convention, the ‘wrong’ side of denim is used, in pieces that twist around the body.” – from Alaïa
