It’s always comforting to see a designer like Alaia plugging away— and still successful, and still keeping true to his creative vision (as tame as it all seems), in these days of musical chairs where even strong talents are fired in place of the latest hype and gimmick.
Having said that, if these designs didn’t have the Alaia name attached to them, this would be easily dismissed as another London-label doing proper girls in awkward, stiff and basic silhouettes. Like Lola, I really liked the last handful of black silhouettes— if only because they do bring back a whiff of that classic Alaia-hotness that seems to be all but missing in his current design nowadays. And, I do love those flapper-style fringes with a new twist pieces that are at once playfully innocent, and also tehno-savvy looking.
A couple handfuls of strong designs with the remaining pieces so forgettable/unflattering/generic doesn’t really seem worthy of an Alaia collection to me.
(And God— do I miss that unreal, surreal and beyond gorgeous cast of Supers that came to define the Alaia image (particularly Naomi in that Alaia signature white lace tennis dress and Nadege in the shimmering snakeskin black trench). These castings of meek watercolours just doesn’t do anything for me. It’s all good that he no longer cares for the Super-image, but you can cast fragile and delicate girls— like what Calvin Klein did with his ushering in the waifs back in the early-90s, and still excite and inspire. Or, Gigli’s gentlewomen all resembling Byzantine princesses sleepwalking [in the words of Tim Blanks)… But this brand of softness— even blankness here, is so… lifeless. What a boring-looking show.)
Thanks sixtdaily for the pics!