In partnership with Akris

Architecture provided the original inspiration for the Akris Ai bag, its distinctive trapezoidal design – seen here as part of the brand’s A/W 2024 collection – remaining a staple of the Swiss fashion house, season after season, some 14 years after its debut.

Akris’ creative director Albert Kriemler was visiting the abandoned Jinhua Architecture Park in China, curated by artist Ai Weiwei when the idea for the bag was first conceived. Among its 17 pavilions, including designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Fernando Romero, Kriemler was struck by a remarkable building conceived by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao.

Her works merge geometry and nature, and to Kriemler, her suspended, trapezoidal structure seemed to echo the ‘A’ in Akris. The experience was something of an epiphany for Kriemler – whose grandmother Alice Kriemler-Schoch had founded in Akris back in 1922 – and led to the geometric form of the Ai bag, the label’s first handbag, launched in 2010.

While it is now offered in leather, wool, cotton, shearling and neoprene, the original Ai bag was crafted in a material first deployed by 18th-century furniture makers, such as Chippendale, and one that remains Kriemler’s favourite. ‘Horsehair was an unexpected fabric in luxury accessories when I chose it for the first Ai bag,’ he says. ‘It is a historical material but its properties make it look like it could have been designed for just now. Horsehair is perfect for travel. It is lighter and more resilient than leather. The colours get more interesting with time and use. And it is so rare. To me, horsehair represents a new era of handbag refinement.’

Kriemler’s collections, from bags to clothing, are characterised by this architectural approach. He embraces colour, fabric and simplicity, driven by the contrast of subtlety and strength. ‘I am convinced that in today’s complex world, it’s all about designing fashion that appears simple at first glance,’ he says. ‘The potential for creativity and zeitgeist lies in a natural, real approach. But creation acquires meaning and relevance when it also fulfils a function.’

For A/W 2024, Akris has embraced ideas of multifunctionality and transformation: a hybrid coat can also be a gilet or a jacket; a trench becomes a dress and a skirt. Volume-shifting silhouettes are sharply tailored and elongated. Textured cashmere knits are sumptuous to the touch. Fabrics span from practical cotton gabardine to weightless organza and lacquered leather and lace. Dark colours dominate the palette, occasionally shot through with lighter tones of ambra, magenta, peridot, and pure ecru for a warm sensuality.

The same spectrum also pertains to the Ai handbag collection. Its enduring silhouette provides a foundation for further development, and also allows for its multifunctional capabilities. All Ai handbags are adaptable to offer three convertible looks: the signature look with turn lock; the pure trapezoidal tote (corners folded inside the bag); and the classic shopper.

No need for branding or labels – the shape of the bag and its similarly trapezoidal Akris clasp offer enduring distinction.

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’Ballet is a total work of art, a Gesamtkunstwerk,’ says Albert Kriemler, creative director of Swiss fashion house Akris. The German term, which rose to prominence in the late 19th century, refers to artworks that combine different mediums into a singular, coherent whole. For ballet, Kriemler lists choreography, lighting, set design, music and – as Kriemler is well-versed, having collaborated with Hamburg Ballet artistic director John Neumeier for over 20 years – costumes.

The latest collaboration between Neumeier and Kriemler is ‘Epilogue’, which sees the designer create a series of costumes for what will be the American director and choreographer’s final work as artistic director of the Hamburg Ballet, which he has led for the past 51 years. A poignant musing on chamber music, it features works by Richard Strauss and Franz Schubert, as well as Simon & Garfunkel, for what the company calls ’an abstract ballet of quiet tones and subtle movements’. It has its premiered last month at the Hamburg State Opera, with further performances planned later in the year and in early 2025.

Akris’ Albert Kriemler on two decades of collaboration with John Neumeier 

Kriemler describes the process of working with Neumeier as one of ’constant dialogue and lively exchange’, with the designer often ’able to anticipate John’s thoughts’ having worked together for the past 20 years. ’It was clear with [this piece] that it would be autobiographical... that alongside his family, there would be five or six unique figures that have played a special role in his life,’ says Kriemler of ‘Epilogue’. ’John is really engaged – he appreciates that I take a theme and bring him ideas, rather than just designing to choreography.’

After the initial meeting, Kriemler will then come back with ’fabrics, volume studies, dresses’, which are then tested by the dancers in the Hamburg Ballet studio. Pieces will then be altered for each individual, with ideas ’changed and discarded’ right up until the show’s premiere. ’It is actually quite similar to the preparations for our défilé [runway show] in Paris,’ he says.

Colour – a hallmark of Akris’ fashion collections, which often see Kriemler inspired by an artist or artistic movement – was particularly important to this piece. Here, Neumeier has asked Kriemler to look towards the colour palettes of early Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. ‘Colours and fabrics are my passion,’ he says. ’The Renaissance has never been [a theme for my collections], but Della Francesca’s colour fascinated me, resulting in a completely new colour world. The male dancers, for example, wear the omnipresent rust red from his work as cotton stretch tops, [which are also] a reference to a T-shirt that John wore in his very first ballet.’

Elsewhere, ’greige’ linen suits take on what Kriemler describes as ’the morbid grey of a monk’s robe we found in a small altarpiece’, becoming one of the ballet’s key pieces. A ’light, structured net dress’ worn by principal dancer Ida Praetorius to dance to Schubert’s piano sonata is called out by Kriemler as another, alongside ’tourmaline-green-blue’ organza dresses and crepe georgette trousers in yellow georgette. ‘They fitted like a glove right for the beginning, and were just made for dancing.’

Of his personal love of ballet, Kriemler says he is ’less interested in how humans move on stage, but rather what moves them and how they find their own language in ballet – with images, movements, and moods.’ ’I believe this is also what connects John and me: his desire to perceive not merely dancers on stage, but individuals who dance, and my aspiration to see them in real, creative clothes rather than costumes,’ he continues. ’There is more to dancing beyond mere technique and classical discipline.’

’Epilogue: Ballet by John Neumeier’ premiered at Hamburg State Opera on 30 June, 2024. Further performances will take place from November 2024 to February 2025, with full details and tickets here.

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In partnership with Akris

For Akris’ Spring 2024 collection, creative director Albert Kriemler turned to the work of Austrian textile designer Felice ‘Lizzi’ Rix-Ueno (1893-1967) for botanical and tonal inspiration, in particular her fascination with poppies. ‘Petals resembling little round fans. Free-floating oval fruits… all in shades of blue, yellow and poppy red,’ said Kreimler, describing the collection. ‘These distinct compositions bring to mind the illusion of movement.’ 

At Akris’ atelier in St Gallen, Switzerland, creative exploration often begins with a new ‘artist relationship’. At the genesis of the design process, Kriemler will fire his imagination through galleries, books and archival material, sometimes making studio visits to gather colour, structure and texture references, before eventually deciding on a particular story that complements the season’s mood. In response to the moment, fabrics, patterns, and silhouettes are reinterpreted. Artistic collaborations are forged. A new collection takes shape. 

Back in S/S 2018, Akris paid tribute to the colour and graphic sensibility of American designer and artist Alexander Girard (1907-1993). For Spring 2021, it was the work of German artist Imi Knoebel that inspired the brand’s futuristic, colour-saturated pieces.

Akris Spring 2024

The Spring 2024 collection is informed by Rix-Ueno’s delicate but powerful textile designs made at the Wiener Werkstätte and later in her adopted home of Kyoto, Japan embracing both the Mitteleuropean graphics of the early 20th century and the traditional floral, bird and fruit motifs of Japanese craft. 

Rix-Ueno’s poppy sketches are interpreted by Kreimler and St Gallen’s embroiderers Forster Rohner on cocktail dresses and organza blouses, with each individual poppy applied by hand. Her design for an Easter bon-bon box decorates a shirt dress, while her watercolour and pencil avian abstracts appear on a button-down collar shirt and combat trousers ensemble. Elsewhere in the collection, the poppy print is rendered as a discreetly drawn border on a light-coloured suit.

Kriemler first came across Rix-Ueno’s ‘design poetry’ at the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna in March 2023. ‘I was amazed by her passion to create a visual language of her own – to become one of the most remarkable textile and craft artists of the 20th century,’ he says. ‘Strong colour contrasts let her art shine to this very day, most fabulously in her flowers and birds. Her whimsical ideas made the universal personal.’  

Viennese modernism, he adds, was defined as a search for reduction and rationality. ‘And then Lizzi came along, bringing ornament, vibrancy, colour and curves.’ A century on, her work still presents a concept of fantasy. ‘For her, it meant demonstrating imagination to achieve originality,’ says Kriemler.

Educated at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna under architect Josef Hoffmann, Rix-Ueno created hundreds of drawings, mainly for fabric patterns, but also for wallpaper, embroidery, enamel work, fashion and home accessories, toys, and graphic artwork. She moved to Kyoto after marrying Japanese architect Isaburō Ueno in 1925, and they later founded a design school in the city. ‘Lizzi was convinced that only inner creativity will lead to one’s identity, truly believing in the expressive possibilities of craft,’ says Kriemler. ‘I very much relate to her idea of craft as a momentum.’  

Rix-Ueno’s aesthetic can be seen throughout this season’s Akris collection, woven into the hand-embroidered poppies, in tassels transformed into sleek fringes, and in floaty organza incorporated into the architecture of suits and coats. ‘I want to celebrate the infinite imagination of “fantasie”,’ says Kriemler. ‘This new Akris collection is a dedication to Lizzi.’ 

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The exhibition ‘Stars, Feathers, Tassels. The Wiener Werkstätte Artist Felice Rix-Ueno’ is at the MAK, Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, until 21 April 2024

Since the 13th century, the medieval city of St Gallen in northeastern Switzerland has been synonymous with textile manufacturing, beginning with simple linen and cotton before a movement towards the intricate embroidery for which it is now best known. From the 1700s onwards, St Gallen embroidery would go on to decorate Europe and beyond – from the Rococo court of France to the growing nation of the USA in the late 19th century – employing over 100,000 workers in the Alpine locale by the turn of the 20th century as manufacturing transferred from handcraft to machine.

St Gallen is also the hometown of Akris, one of Switzerland’s foremost fashion houses, which in 2023 celebrates 100 years in business. Akris was founded by Alice Kriemler-Schoch in 1922 as a manufacturer of aprons, and she would go on to dress local women in clothing made entirely from textiles from both St Gallen and the surrounding area. Later – after son Max Kriemler joined the house – Akris would create not only its own garments but also produce collections and fabrics for Parisian couture houses like Givenchy and Ted Lapidus. In 1980, Max’s son Albert joined the family business; to this day, he is the creative director of the house’s collections, most recently showing a ready-to-wear collection during Paris Fashion Week S/S 2024, inspired by the motifs of Austrian textile designer Felice ‘Lizzi’ Rix-Ueno.

‘Akris: St Gallen, selbstverständlich’ at Textile Museum St Gallen, Switzerland

After a series of events to celebrate 100 years – from an exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich to a special fashion show in Paris that brought back archival designs to the runway – Akris makes its return home this month with an exhibition at St Gallen’s Textile Museum. The exhibition, which runs until March 2024, is titled ‘Akris: St Gallen, selbstverständlich’ – a German word that roughly translates as ‘natural’ or ‘self-evident’ and has been used throughout the 100th-anniversary celebrations. ‘Selbstverständlich is the one single German expression [that] best encapsulates the Akris spirit for me,’ Kriemler told Wallpaper* in October 2022.

Rooted in Akris’ textile and craft expertise – the house is the only Swiss company to be a member of France’s Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode – the new exhibition is a wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between Akris and its home city, particularly within St Gallen’s tradition of textile production. As such, the nexus of the exhibition is a series of collections that were produced during the worldwide lockdowns, when Kriemler found himself drawing inspiration from closer to home – in particular, the A/W 2021 collection ‘A Woman on a Walk’, which was inspired by Robert Walser’s ‘Der Spaziergang’ (‘The Walk’, 1917).

Using this collection as a starting point, the exhibition is based on ‘the leitmotif of taking a walk’ – particularly around a new city – and the moments of discovery the activity encapsulates. Kriemler’s thematic fascinations appear throughout, including nature, architecture, and art, here primarily explored through Akris’ own embroidered garments and motifs. Some of these include delicate honeycomb-shaped needlework on lightweight guipure parkas or Giorgio Morandi-inspired motifs on tulle. Other elements capture Kriemler’s more avant-garde approach: like LED embroidery designed to evoke stars in the sky, or fabrics developed to look like the asphalt of road paving.

The exhibition is completed with an unprecedented look inside Akris’s embroidery archives, which date back to 1940 and are yet to have been on display to the public. Through these pieces, ‘Akris: St Gallen, selbstverständlich’ traces a link between past and present: how such motifs and patterns – whether ‘surprising colours, fragile materials [or the] infinite variety of three-dimensional patterns’, as the house describes – have been transformed by Kriemler into the infinitely contemporary garments of Akris today.

‘Akris: St Gallen, selbstverständlich’ runs from 6 October 2023 to 10 March 2024 at Textile Museum St Gallen, Vadianstrasse 2, 9000 St Gallen, Switzerland. 

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In partnership with Akris 

The new Akris ‘Anna Hobo’ bag is the Swiss fashion house’s sophisticated take on a laidback classic.

Established in 1922 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Akris – now led by the third generation of the founding family – creates clothing and accessories for women with purpose, epitomising an effortless modernity. The distinctive Akris aesthetic – intelligent, discreet, considered, and both contemporary and timeless in style – is defined by creative director Albert Kriemler’s new interpretation of the classic hobo bag. 

Akris rethinks the hobo bag

Redefining the hobo’s slouchy, crescent shape with subtle but practical details and fine materials, the sleek ‘Anna Hobo’ features an invisible magnetic closure and an adjustable strap for multiple carrying lengths and wearable options. Threaded through its trapezoidal ring, the bag’s shoulder strap draws up the super-supple leather into an architectural, A-line silhouette.

A distinctive element of the house’s vernacular, derived from the Akris initial and inspired by Tatiana Bilbao’s trapezoidal pavilion seen by Kriemler at the Jinhua Architecture Park in China, the signature trapezoid shape in hardware details gives a subtle shine and confirms its addition to the Akris family of handbags.

At Akris, fabric is always a priority, exceptional materials being used to create the house’s signature bags, the ‘Ai’, ‘Alexa’, and ‘Anouk’. Crafted using the softest Italian alce calf leather, the ‘Anna Hobo’ is available in two sizes and three rich shades: Black, Cuoio and Olive,. It looks elegant and works perfectly. ‘Functionality,’ says Kriemler, ‘is beautiful.’

Watch the film below.

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Fashion, just like architecture, is about more than what meets the eye. Akris creative director Albert Kriemler knows this well: ‘For me, fashion is not just visual; it is about feeling, it is tactile. In the end, we wear clothes on our skin. This is something you need to feel, not just look at. In interiors, as in fashion, it is always about material and fabrics first.’ It was this intangible quality, this sense of elegance but also comfort and ease that Kriemler wanted to replicate in spatial terms when he embarked on the search for the right partner for a new series of concept stores for the century-old Swiss label. He soon found his perfect match in the studio of David Chipperfield. 

David Chipperfield Architects for Akris

Kriemler and Chipperfield have known each other for more than 20 years, having first met at a party in Zurich through a mutual friend, German architect Christoph Sattler. The British architect’s ‘sensitivity towards context and site specification’, as well as his distinct balance of ‘traditional requirements with a modern, minimalist design approach’, were what attracted the Akris designer to offer him the commission. ‘There is a sense of minimalist beauty and precision, a love of quality and functionalism in this new concept, which I can relate to,’ Kriemler says. ‘He is very experienced in dealing with existing structures, and that is what we need. When we look into new locations for our boutiques, we have to make compromises, because we do not build a house from scratch. David can reconsider old complex situations with the utmost respect – that is what I admire.’

Chipperfield, who famously kick-started his London practice by designing a series of stores for the likes of Issey Miyake, Kenzo and Equipment, is an experienced hand in the fashion world. Now the celebrated architect has additional offices in Berlin, Shanghai, Santiago de Compostela and Milan. The latter is helmed by Giuseppe Zampieri, the practice partner who also heads up the Akris project. ‘We immediately found common ground with Peter [Kriemler, president of Akris] and Albert Kriemler in our discussions about how to best represent Akris values,’ Zampieri says. ‘Materiality and craftsmanship with an international vision are the pillars of this Swiss brand. It was important to translate “Swissness” into something conceptual while avoiding cliché – an expression of heritage, precision and accuracy, celebrating the brand’s roots in Saint Gallen, one of the world’s leading textile centres.’  

The practice is known for its ability to work with a brand and translate it into architectural space in an extremely tailored way. Here, highly refined architecture meets a deep understanding of fashion identities and the ever-changing needs of the particular market, Zampieri explains: ‘Through the years, our approach and language changed according to the evolution of the brands and of the wider industry itself. Our clients are increasingly characterised by a richer research into craftsmanship, as well as a greater attention to the local sourcing of materials. In recent years, fashion houses have come to us to develop an extremely adaptive store concept that can respond to their need for repetition in various locations.’ 

Launched to coincide with the fashion house’s centenary in 2022, a prototype of the new concept debuted in Washington DC in early May 2022, quickly followed by the Tokyo Ginza store the same month. Another, in Chicago, is currently in the works, due to open in the second half of 2023. The design draws on the pillars of the Swiss brand – materiality and craftsmanship. The architects found inspiration in Italian modernist artist Bruno Munari’s tensile structures, using the same technique as a device to craft space. The result is an interior that appears solid, but also delicate, almost floating, with white painted wood panelling serving as a background to a minimalist display system of taut steel cables and shelves. Akris’ signature material, ivory-coloured horsehair fabric, features in the fitting rooms. 

Akris aims for timeless modernity, stresses Kriemler, who also counts Adolf Loos among his sources of architectural inspiration. The Austrian modernist also wrote fashion reviews, and Kriemler recalls how the architect once outlined that ‘a garment was modern when the person who wore it did not stand out’. This corresponds perfectly with Akris’ vision for collections that are selbstverständlich (natural, effortless and self-evident). 

The new concept by David Chipperfield Architects certainly delivers on this approach – these spaces are a representation of the brand’s future. And what would the ideal Akris store say to its visitors? ‘That fashion is about the person first,’ says Kriemler. ‘That is why it is also important to us how women feel in our store. Our mission is to make a woman feel her best self through what she wears – determined and free so she can express her own personality and charisma. Fashion is a language, as we all know. But, first and foremost, it is a conversation between a woman, her body, and her clothes.’   

davidchipperfield.com 

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A version of this article appears in the March 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

When Albert Kriemler was beginning to think about how best to celebrate Akris’ 100th birthday (the creative director is grandson of founder Alice Kriemler-Schoch), he asked himself the question: ‘What makes us unique?’

‘To answer, we went into the archive and picked out pieces from 1978-1992 that seemed particularly important to us,’ Kriemler explains from St Gallen, Switzerland, where the house was founded in 1922 (Akris began with Kriemler-Schoch manufacturing dotted aprons in fabrics from the area’s famed mills, later moving into clothing, much of which featured detailed embroidery).  

Albert Kriemler on 100 years of Akris

These various pieces – among them a double-faced cashmere overcoat (1978), a ruffle-collar lace blouse (1989) and a pair of vicuña nappa leather trousers (1983) – were subsequently photographed by Dutch image-maker Iwan Baan for an upcoming book, Selbstverständlich, which celebrates the house’s centennial year. ‘Selbstverständlich is the one single German expression [that] best encapsulates the Akris spirit for me,’ says Kriemler of the book’s title, which loosely translates to ‘natural’ or ‘self-evident’. ‘It perfectly conveys our aesthetic ideal of clothing, embodying an effortless modernity.’

The backdrop for the photographic series is the 1960s brutalist extension of the University of St Gallen by Swiss architect Water M Förderer, which features various works of contemporary art – a mobile by Alexander Calder, a sculpture by Hans Arp and a tapestry by Pierre Soulages are all found within the space. Since the beginning of his tenure at the house in 1979, Kriemler has positioned Akris at the intersection of fashion, art and architecture; collaborators have included Carmen Herrera, Geta Brătescu, Rodney Graham and Thomas Ruff, among others.

Seeing these archival pieces in a fresh context also set the groundwork for Kriemler’s S/S 2023 collection, shown at Palais de Tokyo last month as part of Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023 (the show doubled as a celebration of Akris’ century in fashion). ‘When we saw the pieces staged in this architectural landmark of modernity in St Gallen, we knew right away we had to work with them for our 100-year collection,’ says Kriemler. 

‘There is always a fine line between embracing the past and defining the future. But these archive pieces seemed so new, unexpected, and stunningly modern to us, that we decided to base our collection on them. They had this absolute timelessness that is and remains modern.’

In the show itself, these archival pieces were interspersed within Kriemler’s S/S 2023 collection for a fusion of past, present and future (the aforementioned 1978 cashmere coat, created by his father Max Kriemler, opened the show). New pieces draw inspiration from the house’s history in both design (‘some came from old paper patterns I found and refashioned to make them of today’) and motifs (lace references his collections of the 1980s, while hearts recall Akris’ very first print, created by Gianpaolo Ghioldi for A/W 1989). 

‘When you think about brands with a past, you feel their history. But, with Akris, we want you to think of something that defies time,’ says Kriemler. ‘I think a woman should have the right to wear a dress for several years without it losing its relevance in the present. In fashion is not the latest fashion, but what really counts and looks right for the moment.’

The anniversary allows a moment of contemplation for Kriemler. ‘A hundred years is a long time; times have changed, fashion has changed, and so has Akris,’ he says. ‘We have come a long way from a humble apron atelier to a fashion house presenting its collection at Paris Fashion Week. We are a small family business that has found its place among the greats in fashion. 

‘A hundred years ago, my grandmother Alice set out to define a woman’s presence and enhance her charisma, and that very much remains my mission today.’

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In partnership with Akris

Selbstverständlichkeit. That’s what drives Akris creative director Albert Kriemler. Natural style and fluid elegance. Sophisticated, functional accessories and refined, ready-to-wear apparel for women with purpose.

Established in St Gallen 100 years ago, the family-owned luxury fashion and accessories house is renowned for its rarefied, innovative fabrics and Swiss craftsmanship. Among others, Albert Kriemler’s designs are inspired by the textured façades on buildings by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, as well as influential artists such as Carmen Herrera, Geta Brătescu, Rodney Graham and Thomas Ruff. The most interesting pieces – the designer believes – can transcend into art forms themselves.

Since 2009, Albert Kriemler has applied his discerning, artistic eye to the Akris brand’s signature bags. Akris’ approach to accessories remains characteristically simple: functionality is beautiful, fabric comes first, shapes require meaning, materials should be unique. All techniques, aesthetics and values applied with versatility and refinement 

The ‘Anouk Messenger’, is the newest addition to the Akris ‘Anouk’ family, which also includes envelopes, day bags and clutches. Created with an elongated shape that can be worn as a modern and adaptable crossbody, the bag’s signature, trapezoid turn-lock – also seen on Akris’ ‘Ai’ shoulder bag designs – completes a contemporary, yet timeless form. 

Available in amber, caramel, taupe, pale rose, peacock, white and black, the ‘Anouk Messenger’ is made of the finest cervo-structured nappa leather and comes in two sizes, little and medium, providing a natural companion for every occasion.

INFORMATION

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In partnership with Akris

Founded in the seventh century, the Swiss city of St. Gallen is home to ancient monasteries and cathedrals, intricate embroidery, and colourfully painted oriel windows. The canton capital is also the inspiration for Akris’ Fall/Winter 2021 collection, a subtle homage to regional roots and local savoir-faire.

St. Gallen has been at the creative epicentre and beating heart of Akris since the brand was launched in 1922 by Alice Kriemler-Schoch, making and selling simple polka-dot aprons.

Current Akris creative director Albert Kriemler – Alice’s grandson – has spent the past three and half decades building a maison committed to quality, practicality, precision tailoring and fine craftsmanship.

Albert Kriemler honours St. Gallen

A city native, Kriemler conceived the St. Gallen Embroidery and Vintage Map Print for the new collection. The city’s rich heritage, a source of infinite reference and reinterpretation for Akris, is given modern verve and a contemporary, easy-going appeal by the new print. 

The Akris Fall/Winter 2021 collection, a celebration of the Swiss house’s impending centennial, made its debut on a specially installed catwalk in St. Gallen.

‘To have a show staged at my own doorstep, my hometown of St. Gallen, seemed only natural to me,’ says Kriemler. ‘It was the first notion that came to my mind while designing this collection, and a leitmotif that let me play with everything that is at the core of the house.

‘The coat, the jacket. The double-face, the embroidery, the knit. The Trapezoid, and the letters spelling: A-K-R-I-S-,’ he continues (referencing the house’s signature trapezoid detail, derived from the letter A, and the brand name, which comes from the letters of his grandmother’s name).

‘St. Gallen, the embroidery city, is renowned for its exquisite fabrics,’ Kriemler says. ‘A textile-excellence cluster that started with the monks weaving linen in the late Middle Ages.

‘Each look in this collection holds an embroidery item. With it I want to celebrate the spirit of St. Gallen, this unique city that defines Akris.’ 

INFORMATION

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It’s no secret that a largely digital-only fashion week is a tricky event to master. Fashion shows function on suspense and anticipation, the expectation of an audience, the first foot on a runway, the inaugural beat of a show soundtrack, the force of the catwalk finale. It’s difficult to recreate this suspense through a computer screen. But for Paris Fashion Week A/W 2021, designers living in a city operating through a lockdown and strict curfew pushed on.

They even took advantage of the French capital’s deserted streets, presenting collections and trends for 2021, that celebrated the spirit of the City of Light and the spectacle of the fashion show, with both pared-back, reserved dressing and exuberant, out-out style.

Like many of us, Chanel's Virginie Viard was feeling the urge to hit the tiles and dance all night with abandon. For the Parisian maison's A/W 2021 offering, the brand's merry troupe of models strode through the deserted streets of Paris, before arriving at legendary Saint-Germain-des-Prés nightclub Castel, which opened in 1961, and was beloved by Pierre Bergé, Serge Gainsbourg and Salvador Dalí. Here, the models shed glittering bouclé coats and puffer jackets at the cloakroom and strutted through salons, sporting glittering mini dresses, transparent skirts and androgynous tweed suits. 

There was also an après-ski sensibility, seen in padded camelia-motif jumpsuits, Chanel ‘CC' logo dungarees and fluffy moonboots. Instagram users were strongly inclined towards the label's evening-meets-off-piste chic, and Chanel’s collection reached more than 246 million users, the widest audience of Paris Fashion Week, according to visual marketing software company Dash Hudson.

Miu Miu was also keen for a ski trip, holding its A/W 2021 show on the snow-topped mountains of Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo, instead of its usual AMO-designed show space at Paris’ Palais d’Iena. Models braved the elements in colourful crochet knits and balaclavas, glossy padded jumpsuits, fluffy ski boots and bejewelled dresses. Ski, but with a side of subversive sleek. 

For her debut at Chloé, Uruguay-born New York-based designer Gabriela Hearst celebrated Paris, home city of the brand. Inspired by the location of Chloé founder Gabrielle Aghion's first salon shows, the brand's A/W 2021 film featured models softly striding from Brasserie Lipp (still a firm fashion week favourite) into softly lit cobbled streets. There was a 1960s fluidity to the collection, reflecting the easy elegance of Hearst's own label. Think striped knitted dresses, patchwork coats in scalloped leather, fluid outdoorsy ponchos and a new eco-aware take on the brand's signature ‘Edith’ bag. Hearst is committed to sustainability, and her debut featured recycled fabrics, from cashmere to silks, alongside 50 secondhand ‘Edith’ bags sourced on Ebay and customised with scraps of fabric. 

AMI's Alexandre Mattiussi wanted not only to celebrate the spirit of Paris, but also the joy of a physical fashion show. His A/W 2021 film, Le Défilé, shot by Spanish filmmaker Alvaro Colom, traced excited models travelling to appear on the catwalk, before strolling in a 1990s-inspired spectacle. 'I wanted to pay tribute to the shows I used to watch from that era on Fashion TV,' Mattiussi explained. ‘Shows with an amazing mood and energy, people screaming!' The brand's collection also paid tribute to 1990s minimalism, with its elevated offering of camel coats, shearling jackets, fringed dresses and and optic tailoring. ‘Pieces that are elegant, sexy and chic,' Mattiussi said. ‘Good clothes for real people.'

Coperni also deemed it essential for the show to go on, and the label's founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant presented an IRL drive-thru event at the Great Hall of the Accord Arena in Bercy, reached by 70 guests in a fleet of electric cars. Here too was a sense of 1990s decadence, with a collection that featured nighttime looks including pastel-hued transparent dresses, slouchy suiting, knee-high boots and scuba leggings

The beauty of a digital-first fashion week is its democratic nature. People from all over the world can view a brand's show through a screen, at the same time as an industry insider. However, this apparent unity can mask isolation, with viewers tending to access the experience in solitude. For Hermès' A/W 2021 show, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski stated: ‘Let us attempt to be creative together – albeit from a distance.' This translated into a film directed by Sébastien Lifshitz, encompassing a trio of shows across continents and time zones. It featured an opening performance in New York, choreographed by Madeline Hollander, a catwalk show in Paris, and wrapped up with a final dance performance in Shanghai, choreographed by Gu Jiani.

For Vanhee-Cybulski, movement was key, and her collection was focused on a joyful emergence into post-pandemic existence. ‘It is urgent now to live again, to venture forth into the unknown, to gain a new lease of life,' she said. Pieces acted as high-luxury hybrids, with smart denim suiting, suits cut like parkas, and ponchos with inbuilt scarves. ‘Classifications disappear into the play of fabrics and pleats,' she added.

For the New York element of Hermès' film, Vanhee-Cybulski was inspired by the physicality of women walking in New York. The notion of walking was integral to a number of designers for A/W 2021, who found solace, inspiration and vigour in exploring on foot. ‘I have the best ideas when I jog or walk,' said Akris' Albert Kriemler. The creative director is famous for collaborating with artists and architects, from Imi Knoebel to Geta Brătescu, but for A/W 2021 the brand's Swiss home town of St Gallen was his muse. In a film directed by Anton Corbijn, with whom Akris also teamed up last season, models strode the town’s snow-topped outer streets in grayscale, before gathering inside its medieval Abbey Library in Technicolour.

Reinterpreting the idea of the Akris logo, Kriemler devised topographical map prints that pinpointed the location of the brand's atelier. ‘My grandmother bought the space in 1944,' he said. He also celebrated the material heritage of the town, which was once responsible for 50 per cent of the world's embroidery. Delicate, punch-cut embroideries detailed comfort-focused, contemporary pieces, including neoprene dresses with laser-cut details, double-face cashmere coats and gauzy map-print tops created using stretch tulle.

During London’s several lockdowns, Laura and Deanna Fanning, the sister creative directors behind Kiko Kostadinov’s womenswear collection, took their daily walk around London’s Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Highgate. With the streets largely deserted, they felt a sense of reclaiming the city and its historic sites, but also noted the lack of inspiration felt when people aren’t around. ‘In big cities people become part of the landscape, it’s one of the reasons you live in them,’ they explained. Their strolls led them to Lauren Elkin’s book Flâneuse, which looks at the walking habits of women writers including Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys, and covers Elkin’s own on-foot adventures, from Venice to Tokyo.

The Fannings were inspired by the idea of 'presenting yourself to other people', taking inspiration from the bright hues found in the street style photography of Japanese magazine Street, from the 1990s and 2000s. Bright colours sported by passers-by on Portabello Road in London inspired bold hues, while darker greys and blacks nodded to the weather of Paris. Draped, tailored and layered silhouettes featured chunky striped knitwear, trousers and jackets with panels of colourful faux fur, futuristic stud-detail trainers, and ruffled skirts. Fluid dresses and shirts with voluminous sleeves featured a retro-futuristic 'radius-dot' print inspired by the Polish Op artist Wojciech Fangor. ‘The print references an idea in Flâneuse, of a cartographer drawing a circle on a map and walking around the area within it,' they explained. ‘The clothes are about showing yourself off, not to please men, but for your own pleasure.'

Showing off is not something that's resonated in recent months, but it's clear that as normalcy beckons, so does our desire to dress up. ‘For me it's about having a positive, joyful approach to luxury,' said Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Rosenberry, who in just two years has brought a contemporary humour, playfulness and sense of luxury to the Parisian couture house. ‘It's about heightening the fantasy.' And what a fantasy A/W 2021 was: think classic silhouettes like poplin shirts, trench coats and denim jumpsuits peppered with hammered gold bijoux buttons evoking the 'eye' and 'lock' surrealist motifs of the house, alongside bags and tweed jackets with 3D 'booby' details and second-skin boots with huge flatform heels. ‘We're taking under-designed silhouettes and embellishing them in an intellectual way,' Rosenberry said. ‘I love the perversity of it all'.

Elsewhere, Paco Rabanne's Julien Dossena referred to his A/W 2021 offering as an ‘affirmation of decadence'. In an uplifting film, smiling women soared through the air to Bryan Ferry's Slave to Love, in souped-up 1970s and 1940s shapes, from frill-necked dresses to wide-legged suiting, embellished in swathes of chainmail, rhinestones and tulle. ‘Looks layered with ornamentation transmit resilience to ravishing effect,' read the brand's press release.

‘This collection is an ode to individuality, freedom and change,’ said Lucie and Luke Meier of Jil Sander’s A/W 2021 offering. The collection amped up ostentation, featuring silk dresses with retro interiors prints, slips with delicate lingerie details, shirts with bold floral embroidery, soft capes with fringed sleeves, and necklaces formed from oversized strings of pearls.

Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson was also inspired by voluminous shapes and bold prints, creating pieces for emerging from isolation that are subtly different from the clothing worn before it. Black and white hues nodded to bridal and funeral ceremonies, missed out on in the last year. Fluid dresses had striking floral prints, coats cocooned the body like dressing gowns, and accessories felt protective, including chunky ponyskin boots, XL chain necklaces and warped handbags

Elsewhere, Issey Miyake's A/W 2021 offering was exuberantly innovative. The label looked to the tones of nature, from shadows to sea shells, debuting futuristic clothing in a film directed by Mikiya Takimoto. Its ‘Cliff' pieces featured garments that appeared to ripple across the body in a series of pleated and non-pleated yarns, including long skirts and unlined trenchcoats. ‘Silk Shade' designs featured abstract prints of flowers glowing in moonlight, created using a traditional hogushigasuri dyeing technique and swathed across fluid side-tie dresses. Concentric pleated ‘Monochrome Planet' designs had circular cut-out forms that bought new dimensions to the body.

A/W 2021 also allowed brands the opportunity to refine their output and drill down into their signatures. For Paul Smith, this meant revisting the subcultural silhouettes that have been synonymous with his five-decade creative tenure. As with the brand's menswear offering, shown in January, the designer looked to mod and grunge shapes, with Madness-inspired ankle-skimming suiting in two-tone fabrics, colourful striped knitwear and mackintoshes in blown-up floral prints from the label's archive. There was a relaxed elegance to the offering, which featured blazers paired with knitted trousers, fit-and-flare dresses in stretchy paisely print jersey and silk pyjamas layered with pea coats. ‘I think when winter comes, people will want to put a cool suit on, or a shearling jacket,' Smith explained. ‘After the start of the year in sweats and then flopping into summer, people will need de-flopping!'

Marine Serre also focused on the essence of her label, one synonymous with half-crescent motifs, upcycled fabrics and a fiercely apocalyptic vision of the future. She presented her 'Core' collection through a series of video vignettes online, featuring Serre fans carrying out mundane tasks from their homes in the city or the country, sporting spliced denim and leather, skirts formed from patches of picnic blanket and scarf swatches, and tattoo-print dresses.

Copenhagen-based Cecilie Bahnsen took time to hone her ethereal and intricately crafted pieces. Designs had a whole-wardrobe aspect, incorporating knitwear, cardigans and quilted trenchcoats, alongside her signature cloud-like dresses, imagined with bow details, voluminous sleeves and cut-outs and in overtly tactile fabrics. ‘The collection is so focused on touch,' Bahnsen explained. ‘Giving people a sense of tactility even when there is distance. The feeling you get putting clothing on is really luxury for us.'

Designers were also keen to reflect the reality of life, which in the past 12 months has called for an existence we never thought possible. For Dior's Maria Grazia Chiuri, this meant delving into the disturbing narratives of fairytales, and journeying to the Palace of Versailles, with a film of sinister and uncanny connotations (think nude bodysuit-clad dancers cavorting around spikes and writhing in the woods under moonlight). On the runway in the Hall of Mirrors, models took on changing feminine identities, in body-cinching hooded Bar jackets and mini skirts à la Red Riding Hood, laser-cut leather pinafore dresses and shirts, and pleated evening gowns. Leopard print and plaids allowed models to move between seductive and conservative, playing with their identities, with angular sunglasses and Oblique-print foulard headscarves.

Rick Owens riffed between rage and resplendence, his women's collection an evolution of January's ‘Gethsemane' menswear offering. The show, presented on Venice Lido, where Owens has spent much of the last year (his factory is a two-hour drive away, in Concordia), featured power-shouldered silhouettes that nodded to both sportswear and haute couture. Puffer jackets trailed like capes, body-hugging sequin gowns had voluminous asymmetric sleeves, trailing ribbed knitwear wrapped around the body, and thong swimsuits functioned as ‘self-contained and sealed body coverings'. Owens saw his powerful shapes as a response to fear and anxiety, and a parody of physical male aggression, transforming female forms into ‘architectural bulldozers'.

At Loewe and his own eponymous label, Jonathan Anderson has led the creative charge in terms of finding imaginative alternatives to the runway show. His ‘Show in the News' collection was an evolution of his ‘Show in a Box’ and ‘Show on the Wall’ concepts. The invitation featured a time capsule-inspired metal tin and, inside it, a newspaper emblazoned with the headline ‘The Loewe Show Has Been Cancelled’. ‘I thought it was nice to put a literary backdrop to the collection,' said Anderson in an accompanying video about the design of the show invitation, which also featured a letter opener and an excerpt of Danielle Steele's new novel The Affair. The collection was similarly layered, rifffing on tailoring and soft boyish shapes, voluminous draped dresses and intarsia knitwear, in bold tones and with sequin, tassel, buckle and fringe details. Think suede jackets with soft shoulders, heeled boots with XL debossed clasps, gowns with graphic paillettes and oversized blazers in painterly silks.

After a month-long series of shows – spanning New York to London, and showcasing narrative films and lookbooks, printed matter and the dense reach of digital – Louis Vuitton closed Paris Fashion Week with a celebration of the runway show in its purest form. The brand's A/W 2021 offering, presented in the Denon wing of The Louvre, was resplendent with voluminous and futuristic shapes, which drew on ancient garments and 1980s silhouettes. On a global live stream, models walked to Daft Punk track ‘Around the World’, sporting architectural capes and puffball ruffled skirts, statue-and-cameo-print jackets marking a collaboration with Fornasetti, and richly embroidered A-line dresses. Boots had chunky sculptural heels, and flats resemembled bow-detail gladiator sandals. Presented in a historic setting, the show spanned both the past and present, showcasing fashion for the future – one which viewers around the world are waiting on with wide-eyed anticipation. 

On the hunt for an eye-catching piece of arm-candy? We suggest you invest in a handbag that doubles up as an artwork too. There’s a historic portfolio of artist-designed accessories that are collectors items today, from Takashi Murakami's 2003 collaboration with Louis Vuitton, which featured styles with Vuitton's monogram reimagined in 33 different colours, followed by 2008's cherry motif and ‘monogramoflage' print, to Prada’s 2013 partnership with Damien Hirst, boasting Plexiglas handbags crawling with beaded insects.

For 2021, turn your curatorial eye to styles from Dior, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Loewe and Akris whose signature handbag designs have been reimagined with state-of-the-art style.

Dior

In 2016, the French maison launched its Dior Lady Art project, which saw a host of multidisciplinary global artists reimagine its Lady Dior handbag, which was first launched in 1994, by then creative director Gianfranco Ferré. The style was famously beloved by Princess Diana, who was gifted the handbag by France's First Lady, Bernadette Chirac, in 1995. 

Since the Dior Lady Art's launch, the Lady Dior's quilted Cannage motif and the lettered charms that hang from its rounded top handles have been reimagined with striking effect, by artists including Namsa Leuba, Isabelle Cornaro, Athi-Patra Ruga and Marguerite Humeau. Now, for the fifth iteration of Dior Lady Art, the brand has bought together ten artists and collectives from around the world, including Judy Chicago – who collaborated with the label on the banner-hung backdrop for its S/S 2020 Haute Couture show, Recycle Group and Gisela Colon.

We're finding real artistic inspiration in Song Dong's take on Dior's signature accessory. His ‘Windows Bag' features a graphic mosaic of miniscule colourful windows and dazzling mirrors, and appears to change shape dependent on the angle you view it. Windows are a central motif in the artist's work, which when presented as sculptural forms, are used to convey themes of impermanence, transience and memory.

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Louis Vuitton

Back in 2017, the maison enlisted Jeff Koons to emblazon paintings by Old Masters on its handbags, including Monet, Da Vinci and Rubens, inspired by the American artist's 2015 ‘Gazing Ball series’. An entire gallery worth of artists have been enlisted by the label to reinterpret its accessories, including Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince, The Chapman Brothers, Cindy Sherman and Yayoi Kusama. Now Louis Vuitton has teamed up with Swiss artist Urs Fischer – famed for his experimentation with distortion and scale – on a series of bags, accessories and ready-to-wear pieces, tessellated with hand-drawn ‘memory sketches’ of the signature LV monogram, in a tactile velvet fabrication. 

Fischer also collaborated with the label back in 2019, as part of its Arty Capucines project, which saw its Capucines BB handbag reimagined by artists including Alex Israel, Jonas Wood and Sam Falls. Fischer's featured a style constructed in striking white leather, which was transformed into a sculpture, hanging with a series of silicone fruits and vegetables on length of chain, including an apple, a carrot, a strawberry and a mushroom.

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Fendi

In recent years, a host of artists have been enlisted to reinterpret Fendi’s accessories For the brand’s A/W 2020 collection, Fendi teamed up LA-based artist Joshua Vides, and bags including the Peekaboo and the Baguette were imagined in black and white, their design details appearing as if scribbled on with chunky permanent marker.

In late 2020, Fendi also worked with visual artist Sarah Coleman, who takes particular influence from logo culture, swathing every day objects with monograms by Fendi and Gucci. Coleman has an affinity for Fendi’s Zucca print, which was designed by Karl Lagerfeld in three seconds in the 1960s, and a manipulated take on the logo appears on Fendi’s Peekaboo bag.

‘I thought it would be really funny to use a photo-editing app different from Photoshop, so I used Facetune. I liked the idea of using this software that’s so commonly used by people to edit their face and body,’ Coleman told Wallpaper* in November 2020. The handbag design was unveiled the same month at Fendi’s boutique in Miami’s Design District. ‘Sarah had already been repurposing our iconic prints in her work, which invited the opportunity to see how this creativity can evolve by collaborating,’  said Silvia Venturini Fendi, the brand’s creative director. 

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Left, jacket, £2,200; ‘Jackie’ bag, £1,590, both by Gucci. Earrings, £195, by Completedworks. Right, jacket, £5,770; skirt, £1,635; ‘11.12’ bag, £5,555, all by Chanel. Bracelet, £32,700, by Sophie Bille Brahe. Fashion: Jason Hughes

Loewe

‘I wanted to show this early body of work because it really complemented Loewe in terms of technique,’ says the Madrid brand’s creative director Jonathan Anderson of his celebration of the landscape focused work of famed ceramicist Ken Price. The LA-based artist is most famous for his blobby abstract forms, resembling flows of molten lava or oozy amoebas, but for Loewe’s latest artist-led capsule collection, Price's depictions of warmly hued houses in New Mexico and palm-tree lined LA vistas take focus.

Anderson often looks to artists for inspiration when updating Loewe's renowned accessories roster, like the Puzzle, Gate and Hammock handbag. The brand's pieces have celebrated the work of William Morris, William de Morgan and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The label's prowess in leather marquetry is well suited to Price's artworks and his domestic ceramics pieces formed between the 70s and 90s, including Town Ware (from Easter Island) (1977) and Bottom LA Bowl, (1991) are formed from slivers of leather which are delicately pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

‘They’re uplifting and optimistic,’ Anderson says of the presience of Price’s works. ’I feel like fashion is in a moment when it’s questioning the purpose of buying. The collection’s pieces are a way of investing into both Ken Price and Loewe.’ 

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‘Colour is everything to me, this season more than ever before,’ explained Akris creative director Albert Kriemler of the aesthetic impetus behind collaborating with German abstract artist Imi Knoebel for the Swiss brand's S/S 2021 collection. ‘A Knoebel line, colour or form is instantly recognisable as its own,' adds Kriemler of Knoebel's mixed media works, the first of which ‘Face 50’ (2003), created using layer of aryclic-topped plastic, he saw in Galerie Wilma Lock, a St Gallen art gallery in 2004. 

Albert Kriemler often turns curator, collaborating with a host of artists and architects as part of his design process, including in the past, Geta Bratescu, Thomas Ruff and Alexander Girard. For spring, he turned to Knoebel's prismatic and luminest works, that combine paper ‘knife-cut' pieces and geometric shapes, referencing pieces including ‘Rot Gelb Blau - 54 Messerschnitte’ (1979) and ‘Blue Angel’ (1999). These pieces are translated across ready-to-wear pieces and accessories, from flowing dresses to the brand's signature trapezoid-shape Ai handbag, with designs revelling in colour and geometric form for dramatic effect. 

‘He shares Matisse’s desire to “make colour sing”,' Kriemler says of Knoebel's work. ‘Or as I would rephrase it: He lets colour shine.’ 

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Just days before the opening of Paris Fashion Week, new Covid-19 restrictions were implemented in France. Bars and restaurants in Marseilles were shuttered. In Paris, drinking spots were ordered to close at 10pm and gatherings of more than 10 people were banned in public places. The final city to host the S/S 2021 shows with the most sizeable schedule has been beset with travel restrictions – from the 14 day quarantine required of returning UK citizens, put in place in mid-August – to the announcement that those arriving in Italy from France are subject to a Covid-19 test. But for the City of Lights, and the epicentre of the French fashion industry, estimated at creating one million jobs and €150 billion in direct sales each year, the shows had to go on, if at least in largely ‘phygital' form.

French fashion behemoths including Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton staged live physical shows, in venues including the top floors of former department store La Samaritaine, which has been shuttered since 2005, and the rooftop of the office skyscraper Tour Montparnasse, while brands including Balenciaga, Thom Browne and new-to-the schedule Wales Bonner devised innovative collection films, featuring in Browne's case, a trio of Olympic athletes. When a week before in Milan, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada debuted their co-creative collection via a live stream, so Matthew Williams also presented his first collection for Givenchy online, teasing out his debut designs days before on Instagram.

Maria Grazia Chiuri may have presented a softer Dior silhouette for spring – inspired by enforced ease with which we are living our lives – but she didn’t go soft on the set design of the maison’s show, which was live streamed for the first time on TikTok. Inside a socially-distanced tent at the Jardin des Tuileries, Chiuri enlisted Italian visual artist and writer Lucia Marcucci, to create 7-meter high stain glass collages, that sprung up in 18 illuminated columns, inspired by the 2011 artwork ‘ Vetrata di poesia visiva’. Collage has a visual resonance with Chiuri, and she uses the art form as a tool to convey her feminist methodology. For the brand’s A/W 2018 show, she pasted the walls of the brand’s show space with provocative magazine covers and slogans, in a collection which nodded to the student protests in Paris in 1968.

If Dior is defined by the cinched in silhouette, Chiuri relaxed this rigour for spring. Models sported loose gauzy gowns, dressing gown shape jackets, easy tuxedo trousers and utilitarian cagoules. While her silhouettes were made for our at-home habits, details had an escapist élan, incorporating nomadic tie-dye, tassels, crochet and faraway florals. Designs for social-distancing, but still with a dream.

If anyone was going to respond to the practicalities of Covid-19 with technical tenacity it was Coperni. The label has its finger on the pulse of contemporary life, incorporating the digital experience into its design DNA. For S/S 2021, founders Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant developed ‘C+' a protective technical jersey developed using Swiss technology, which is lightweight, moisturising and anti-bacterial. This fabric – which is immersed in silver ions – was incorporated into streamlined designs, which worked to enhance the body, not restrict it, like elasticated trousers and loose buttonless shirts. The collection, shown on the roof of Paris’ tallest skyscraper, also featured wet suit leggings and technical blazers, with easy zip fastenings.  

Face masks and visors have entered the global accessory lexicon, and for his sophomore outing for Kenzo, creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista tapped into this phenomenon. Inspired by an early 20th century photograph of a man wearing a structural 3D mosquito net and cap (complete with a hole for his pipe), he created silhouettes which spoke of soft protection. Models walking outdoors at the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, wore mackintoshes and gauzy archival floral print cagoules, paired with beekeepers hats, some of which had transparent coverings protecting not only the face, but cocooning the entire body.

In 2020, the world accelerated in line with Marine Serre’s apocalyptic design vision, with proposes sustainable silhouettes for battling climate change, and environmental and social chaos. These mediate somewhere between sportswear and couture. In ‘Amor Fati', a film directed by Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiago, she presented a cinematically impressive sci-fi fantasy, with a circular narrative hooked around a laboratory, a natural landscape and an underground water-world. Serre’s cast sported balaclavas, Black Panther-centric berets and body suits, arming themselves against upheaval with recycled moire harnesses and holsters.

There’s also an apocalyptic armour behind Rick Owens’ designs. In recent seasons, the label’s creations have drawn on the garb of glam rock stars and mythological Aztec gods. For spring, Owens streamed a show from a piazza in front of Venice Lido’s casino – the spot where he spends his summers, and also the city where the term quarantine originated, when during the Black Death, infected ships arriving in the port where isolated for 40 days. An apt allusion to our times, the collection was titled ‘Phlegethon’, referring to one of the rivers in the Inferno described in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Owens equipped his hell dwellers in jackets with bulbous shoulders, fluid gowns, leather hot pants, platform thigh high boots and face masks. Uncharacteristically optimistic hues of creamy pink, banana yellow and candy apple red nodded to Neapolitan gelato. In his show notes Owens said, ‘I might just be getting into a taste for the lurid that an undercurrent of threat and dread can inspire.’ 

Pepto Bismol pink was also a colour favoured by Kiko Kostadinov’s Laura and Deanna Fanning, who for S/S 2021, evolved the label’s womenswear lexicon, experimenting with both Victorian and 1970s shapes, in bold hues and textures. Standout were hand craft-focused shirred and smocked dresses, which pucker and crinkle around the body, retro wide-collared tailoring, and an update of the brand’s curved Louis heel, embellished with colourful crystal beads and accentuated with Gladiator ankle straps.

Wales Bonner showed for the first time on the S/S 2021 schedule, but her collection – presented in ‘Thinkin Home', a sunset-drenched film by Jamaican artist Jeano Edwards – was the second in a three-collection spanning exploration of the diasporic connections between Britain and the Caribbean. While A/W 2020’s ‘Lovers Rock’ considered the British Jamaican community in the 1970s in London – inspired by Bonner’s father’s family, and photographs of teenagers hanging at Lewisham Youth Club, ‘Essence' explores the early 1980s origination of dancehall music in her grandfather's home country. Bonner looked to the style of Augustus Pablo, the Jamaican roots reggae and dub record producer and musician, and her collection sung of dancehall vibrancy and sleek British smartness, featuring stripe caftans mixed with tailoring, and fluid knitwear and bold patchwork corduroy. The collection also continued her collaboration with Adidas Originals, on slimline shell suits and colour blocked tees.

‘Psychedelic optimism’ is how Acne Studios’ Jonny Johansson summed up the brand’s S/S 2021 collection, designed to celebrate the possibilities of life experienced on pause. Looking to astrological elements as optimistic symbols, the Swedish brand collaborated with the LA-based artist Ben Quinn on a series of star prints layered over organza tunics. Johansson also honed in on luminescent fabrics, finding illumination in pearlised cotton, metallic threads and iridescent paper, and celebrating fluid and diaphonous silhouettes, with handcrafted details. Akris’ Albert Kriemler also found inspiration in phosphorescence, namely the light-emitting sculptures of Imi Knoebel. He collaborated with the German Minimalist on a series of fluorescent and vibrant creations that nodded to the artist’s graphic and colour-focused oeuvre, including caftans and relaxed dresses and chic tracksuits. ‘A Knoebel line, colour or form is instantly recognisable as its own. It represents what felt very right for this moment,' Kreimler explained. ‘Something designed today should not be obsolete tomorrow.'

There have been diverse opinions regarding the return to the physical show format, and one designer content with finding alternative methods is Jonathan Anderson. For the men’s shows back in July, he devised a ‘show-in-a-box' concept for his eponymous label, and for Spanish house Loewe where he is creative director, containing interactive runway show-inspired ephemera. At Loewe, the label's S/S 2021 men’s design was imagined as a grey canvas index card box – conceived in collaboration with M/M (Paris) – packed with fabric swatches, a record, and a pop-up show set, inspired by Duchamp's ‘Boîte-en-valise', a box the artist carried in a suitcase with miniature monographs of his own work.

For S/S 2021 womenswear, Anderson broke out of the boundaries of the box, creating a ‘Show-on-the-wall', an artist's portfolio featuring S/S 2021 looks, accompanied by an interactive selection of ephemera, encouraging its receiver to immerse themselves in the collection's elements, as the viewer would at a physical runway show. Eagerly Instagrammed add-ons included a roll of wallpaper designed by Anthea Hamilton, plus a border roll depicting spring's voluminous and architectural shapes – enhanced with plumes of taffeta, ruffles of broderie anglaise, glittering knots and XL pleats – sent with Loewe monogrammed scissors, a canvas tool bag, paintbrush and glue. 

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski also placed focus on the printed form, sending out a collectors' item scrapbook to accompany Hermès’ physical show, with atmospheric images lensed by creatives including Wallpaper* collaborator Katrien De Blauwer. The maison’s accompanying collection was a masterclass in seductive minimalism. Body suits with cut-out backs were paired with knee length skirts in the supplest leather, crisp trousers styled with bandeaus, while shawl coats featured rolled up collars that unpoppered into scarves. The colour palette was rich and restrained in tones including caramel, sorbet yellow and scarlet. The most luxurious house shoe for spring? The Hermès clog, complete with an ‘H’ detail leather upper.

Paul Smith – whose beloved British brand celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – immersed himself in his personal history for spring. The designer – who swapped a physical or digital show for a lookbook and walk-through press appointments in London – was inspired by over 30 holiday photo albums, featuring snapshots of himself and wife Pauline. ‘We designed it over the phone!’ Smith laughed of the creative process behind the soothingly optimistic collection which features easy zip-up jackets in stripe tailoring fabrics, silk skirts and beach shorts emblazoned with enlarged archive rose prints, plus unconstructed tailoring. A double-breasted jacket with tactile prick stitch detailing, was inspired by the retro shapes Smith spotted on trips to Havana. ‘If people have been wearing sweats and tees all year, we ned to ease them back in,’ he said of the soft shapes.

There was also a nostalic nod behind Miu Miu's spring offering, which featured super sweet girlish silhouettes, like tracksuit tops paired with retro briefs, stripe halternecks and tennis skirts, knitted polo shirts and micro minis shimmering with plastic pailettes. It spoke of the innocent joy on dressing up and was sublime in its celebratory tone.

Designers used the downtime experienced during global lockdown to reconsider the core values of their brand. In fashion cities across the world, labels have presented pared-back or streamlined collections, with fewer looks and more focus. This concept resonated with designer Satoshi Kondo, who, troubled by the sheer number of shipment boxes used to transport Issey Miyake's last A/W 2020 offering from Tokyo to Paris, conceived a collection so compact it fitted into one. S/S 2021 features a number of shrink-inspired silhouettes that nod to the brand’s prowess in fabric development and innovation, from a technical parka and poncho which can be folded into a garment bag, to zig-zag knit patterned tops and dresses that can be rolled into a shape of a sponge. 

Y/Project’s Glenn Martens also presented a vision which evoked the ‘essential meaning’ of the experimental brand. Celebrating the versatility of its hybrid silhouettes, an accompanying ‘How to wear’ film showed how pieces could shaped, with the incorporation of zips and poppers. At Schiaparelli too, Daniel Rosenberry’s third collection for the house was focused on ‘essential silhouettes in the best fabrics’ that assimilated the hand-focused flourishes of haute couture, like trouser suits in the brand’s signature hot pink with Rorschach test-centric prints, Delphic gowns and chain-embellished shirting. These silhouettes were anything but shy, and were paired with hammered gold jewellery with nose and keylock details – surrealist symbols of the house.

While few were physically able to attend Paris for the spring shows, brands chose to celebrate the city itself. At Ami, the brand held its first show on the womenswear schedule, on the bank of the River Seine. In a more seductive spin than previous seasons, models sported dresses with cut-outs at the décolletage and check pencil skirts paired with string vests, inspired by Nineties evening wear. The urban landscape also inspired the soundtrack to Paco Rabanne’s pared-back physical show at Espace Commines, which bought a relaxed, daytime ease to the brand's disco-centric shapes. Nostalgic noises, that were silent for so much of this year, accompanied the collection, like dogs barking, police sirens honking, cars indicating and bike bells jingling.

The fashionable flaneur was also a focus. In a digital film presented as a music video, Balenciaga's S/S 2021 models stomped towards the Place Vendôme and along the Seine in the dark, miming to a synthy take on Corey Hart’s electro pop hit ‘Sunglasses at Night,’ sporting chainmail dresses and hybrid sportswear, fluffy heeled hotel slippers and wraparound shades, naturally. Rokh’s Rok Hwang was also fascinated with the concept of walking outside at night - a pastime we’ve all appreciated in recent months - recalling teenage wanders with friends when living in Austin Texas. The brand’s cinematic show film, set in an otherworldly location, featured modern flaneurs in fighting forms, including ruffled and tartan Victoriana dresses layered with leather harnesses.

For his debut at Givenchy, 1017 ALYX 9SM founder Matthew Williams teased out snippets of his S/S 2021 showcase a week before on Instagram, posting low-fi close-up images of chains and padlocks, lensed by Nick Knight. Hardware was essential to the designer’s vision, which was revealed in a surprisingly low key lookbook, with metal elements designed as a luxurious interpretation of the much-coveted logo. Williams looked at the codes of the historic couture house through a Gen Z-centric streetwear lens, featuring sleek, architectural shapes like square shouldered leather capes paired with gauzy bejewelled gowns, severe tailoring and tube dresses with seductive exposed backs. Williams nodded to previous creative directors, celebrating the tenure of Alexander McQueen with animalistic accessories, like sandals with curving horn heels and caps with knobbly antlers, and to Riccardo Tisci, in a hardware-focused revision of the graphic Antigona bag, beloved of supermodels in the Noughties. Referring to the collection as a ‘sampler’ of things to come, William’s Gen-Z fans will be fixated on what is next.

Chanel is one of many red carpet labels that has lost out to countless cancelled occasions this year, although Julia Garner and Shira Haas did opt to wear the brand to the Emmy’s first ever ‘phygital' awards show. With a typically insouciant mindset, creative director Virgine Viard was attracted to the off-duty attitude of an actress before a photocall for S/S 2021. In the show's press release she spoke of women with ‘their attitude a little out of sync with the outfits they’re wearing’ – a feeling many people have experienced this year, dressing up for visual dinner parties and on-screen events. Models walked against a huge Hollywood-inspired Chanel sign – the letters of the house erected with huge scaffolding – at a physical show inside the Grand Palais, sporting fluid asymmetric dresses, power shouldered skirt suits, sequin bermuda shorts and slogan t-shirts inspired by neon lights. The show celebrated cinematic escapism, one of which was rooted in reality.

Also intrigued by the codes of dressing today, John Galliano dissected the haute couture shapes and techniques used in Maison Margiela’s Artisanal collection, creating ethereal, finely crafted and avant-garde creations which were presented in ‘S.W.A.L.K 2', a Nick-Knight directed sequel to the brand’s video in July. The 40 minute film flits between fitting scenes in the label’s studio, and a sprawling estate in Tuscany, where Galliano’s models dance the tango, offering extensive insight into the creative process behind creating a collection.

Louis Vuitton's Nicolas Ghesquière was also fascinated by the concept of ‘in between garments' that reflect the on-pause lifestyle of today, somewhere between suiting and sportswear, at home clothes and ones for dreaming of going out. Usually showing in various areas of The Louvre, from its IM Pei-designed Cour Marly to its underground Pavillon de l’Horloge, the label decamped to the top floor of La Samaritane, the LVMH-owned department store which has been shuttered for refurbishment since 2005. In a physical and digital presentation blend, the Art Deco architecture and Art Nouveau frescoes were offset with green screen elements, which showed snippets of Wim Wenders ‘Wings of Desire' to audiences at home. Ghesquière's ‘stylistically vague' shapes featured 1980s power suiting, chainmail mini dresses and slouchy knitwear. Silhouettes appeared elegantly thrown on, like boardshorts paired with a long duster coat and a ‘Peace’ slogan tee. The show summed up a season that navigated the online and physical realms, creating clothing which caters to today's much changed lifestyle, one which shows no sign of settling come spring.

In 2004, when Akris' creative director Albert Kriemler visited Galerie Wilma Lock, in the Swiss brand’s picturesque home city, St Gallen, he came across ‘Face 50’, a 2003 artwork by German artist Imi Knoebel - a pioneer of multi disciplinary minimalist abstract art. The piece is part of a series of twelve works, formed from geometric layers of acrylic-topped plastic, which reflects an exploration of colour integral to the Düsseldorf-based artist's practice. ‘A Knoebel line, colour or form is instantly recognisable as its own,' Kriemler says of his affinity for the artist.

Kriemler and Knoebel didn’t meet until 13 years later, when in Vienna, Kriemler learnt of the artist’s colour workshop, where he mixes his one-of a-kind hues from over 700 colour swatches, which are pinned according to tone on its walls. ‘I was always fascinated by the way Knoebel dares to develop new hues,' Kriemler says. ‘He shares Matisse's desire to “make colour sing” or as I would rephrase it: He lets colour shine.'

Optimistic colours have had particular presence on the S/S 2021 catwalks. Brands including Salvatore Ferragamo, Tod’s and Christopher Kane have celebrated vibrant painterly hues, in a fashion proposition that works to channel positivity. ‘Colour is everything to me, this season more than ever before,’ Kriemler says of the inspiration behind Akris’ S/S 2021 collection – which in a collaboration with Knoebel - celebrates the artist’s artistic forms and flourishes. Each season, Kriemler takes on the role of not just creative director, but also curator, collaborating with a host of artists, textile designers and architects, including Geta Brătescu, Carmen Herrera, Sou Fujimoto and Thomas Ruff. Last season, Kriemler presented his A/W 2020 collection inside the museum of modern art in Paris, lined with huge artworks by Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque and Pierre Chareau, which inspired his graphic orphist-centric offering. This season – in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions – Akris opted to present its collection as a digital film, directed by Anton Corbijn.

Kriemler met Knoebel in his studio in 2019 to discuss their collaboration, but it wasn’t until May 2020 that he was able to physically travel to see him again. ‘Before then, we continued to share our thoughts and ideas over the phone and screen,' Kriemler explains. ‘When we did meet, I showed him the fabrics we'd developed in person.'

The collection is interwoven with elements of Knoebel's oeuvre – in bold and luminescent colours and with cut-out details and graphic patchwork appliqué evoking his spliced ‘knife-cuts' technique, and layered experimentations with aluminium, acrylic and paper. A streamlined silk stretch knit dress tessellated with spliced shapes in red, blue and yellow, nods to Knoebel’s cut-and-pasted ‘Rot Gelb Blau - 54 Messerschnitte’ (1979), while a billowing kaftan evokes the geometric lines of ‘Blue Angel' (1999). Elsewhere, graphic prints and tulle inserts on tops, metal buttons on double-breasted jackets and leather embellishments on bags evoke Knoebel’s experiments with jagged acrylic and wood cut-outs. 

When Kriemler and Knoebel had the opportunity to meet earlier this year, they discussed two pieces in particular - ‘Raum 19’ (1968), a modular sculptural installation formed from 77 pieces of raw spruce and square and cylindrical Masonite boxes, and ‘Batterie’ (2005), a cube of aluminium panels painted with a phosphorescent substance. A later version of the first artwork, titled ‘Raum 19 III' (2006) has been exhibited alongside Batterie, and the two artworks charge each other. 

Fluorescent pieces in Akris’ S/S 2021 collection nod to this collaborative phenomenon, like easy silk knit dresses, parkas and jogging bottoms - relaxed shapes which also speak of at-home ease. Their luminescence is a charged symbol of collaboration and creativity, illuminating how fashion can dilute a year defined by darkness. ‘Clothes will remain powerful vectors to cheer us up, to soothe and to strengthen us,' Kriemler says. ‘To help you drive forward.' 

INFORMATION

eu.akris.com

Over the last month, we’ve transitioned to viewing the world from a smaller viewfinder. As the perspective of our new parameters has shifted, so we’ve found uplift in everyday domestic details or striking beauty in the natural world, now seen largely through our windows. As fashion designers have acclimatised to this new, four wall-defined way of life, from Beijing to Berlin, London to Longiano, we’ve invited those within our creative community to document by hand what they can see from their work desk or window. Here we present our rooms with a view.

Manolo Blahnik, Bath

‘The sky was blue almost Mediterranean,’ says the footwear behemoth of the lush garden view from his bedroom window.

Maria Grazia Chiuri, womenswear artistic director Dior, Rome

A unifying Italian flag hangs from the window of Chiuri's home in Italy's capital.

Michael Halpern, London

Jars of citrus fruits and bowls of fiery chillis sit on the colour-inclined womenswear designer's work desk.

Margaret Howell, Suffolk

‘One drawing is my sheep’s trough with planted tall, reed grass. The other is my hazelnut tree, which planted itself by seed many years ago. I drew this just as it’s new leaves are coming out. At least nature is carrying on as normal' – MH.

Bryan Conway, design director Tiger of Sweden, Stockholm

Titled ‘Spring in Sweden,' Conway's sketch offers a tree-lined street scene in the country's capital.

Marco de Vincenzo, Rome

From his window, the womenswear designer can see the splendid baroque architecture of Rome.

Massimo Giorgetti, founder MSGM, Milan

Plant-festooned balconies greet Giorgetti as he looks across Milan from his apartment.

Eudon Choi, London

From the view of his kitchen table, the womenswear designer sees a selection of sculptures and stacks of his husband's copies of Wallpaper*.

Karl Templer, artistic director Ports 1961, London

A green garden view greets the artistic director from his work desk in London.

Pierre Hardy, Paris

The window view through the accessories and jewellery aficionados wood panelled apartment reveals the splendour of the River Seine.

Thom Browne, New York

The designer presents an abstract view from his Central Park West location.

Petar Petrov, Vienna

Mannequins and a cutting table make up the designer's view across his mid-century apartment and live-in studio.

Isabel Marant, Paris

Natural beauty greets the progenitor of Parisian chic from her window.

Samuel Ross, founder A-Cold-Wall*, London

The boundary-pushing menswear designer shares a domestic scene from the London-based home he shares with his family.

Maria Skappel-Holzweiler, head of design Holzweiler, Oslo

For the head of design of the family run, Norwegian brand, respite comes in watching her children painting Easter eggs, outside in a pergola.

Sean Suen, Beijing

The menswear designer, who has been on lockdown since late January, shares a domestic scene in pencil and coloured wax crayon.

Lorraine Acornley, creative director Begg & Co, Hertfordshire

Quick daily observational sketches of a plant pot on Acornley's desk, ‘explore line and materials'.

Giuseppe Zanotti, Longiano

The Italian footwear behemoth is currently residing in his home in Longiano, Emilia-Romagna, a short distance from the brand's factory.

Daniel Rosenberry, artistic director Schiaparelli, New York 

‘My window, my desk, my things and me' – DR.

Tammy Kane, co-founder and creative director Christopher Kane, London

A view of nature across a conservatory has been imagined using oil on canvas and oil crayon.

Albert Kriemler, creative director Akris, St Gallen

Lines from First Suprematist Standing Poem (1965), by writer, visual artist and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay, greet Kriemler.

Giuseppe Marretta, menswear design director, Pringle of Scotland, London

Exhibition posters and verdant plant life offer visual distraction for the menswear designer.

MM6 design collective, MM6, Paris

The eclectic collective serve up a symbolic sketch inspired by the inversion of social structures. ‘Even so, we are still singing,' they add.

Cecilie Bahnsen, Copenhagen

A huge Scots pine tree stands outside Bahnsen's window in the Danish capital.

Erdem Moralıoğlu, London

A sketch of rooftops from Moralıoğlu's window sits amongst ready-to-wear illustrations and swatches of fabric.

Alessandro Sartori, artistic director Ermenegildo Zegna, Milan

An abstract artwork, cosy chair and Cire Trudon candles all make up Sartori's domestic set up.

Roksanda Ilinčić, London

Linck Ceramics vases – from a curated Matchesfashion collection with Wallpaper's Picky Nicky – stand next to a window plastered with a community-focused NHS poster. 

Molly Molloy, co-founder Colville, Milan

‘I look out on to a courtyard of bright yellow apartments and have a balcony full of tropical plants. When the sun is out I have the windows open, you can hear the clattering of plates at lunch time and the smell of amazing Italian dishes cooking.' – MM

Ramesh Nair, artistic director Moynat, Paris

Stacks of artist monographs and a feline friend sit on Nair's busy work desk.

Feng Chen Wang, Shanghai

Shanghai's built up skyline forms the backdrop to the menswear designer's studio space.

Gherardo Felloni, creative director Roger Vivier, Isola del Giglio 

A burnt sun setting over the ocean greets the footwear designer from his island home.

Alexandre Mattiussi, founder AMI, Paris

A window view completely free of buildings offers the natural gift of a clear blue sky.

Scene setting: Richard Artschwager, Geta Brătescu, Alexander Girard, Egon Schiele, artists are a long time inspiration to Albert Kriemler. So it was fitting that for Akris’ A/W 2020 runway show, the creative director of the Swiss maison took guests to a gallery space in the museum of modern art, lined with huge artworks by Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque and Pierre Chareau. The colourful orphist aesthetic of Sonia and Robert Delaunay was of particular inspiration to the designer, alongside the modernist output of architect and designer Robert Mallet-Stevens, who famously designed Villa Noailles, the art-filled home of the Hyères Festival of Photography and Fashion.

Mood board: Cubist prints, in black and white or rusty tones were tessellated across fluid silk shirts and loose trousers, or double-breasted suits constructed from an unusual silk devore velvet blend, with a glittering brushstroke finish. Houndsooth capes had an elegant, graphic appeal, tailoring imagined in midnight blue leather or a sea of sparkling sequins and long lace dresses given an orphist updated with squares of patchwork silk.

Finishing touches: From Valentino to Versace, brands have given eveningwear a modern, rebellious twist by pairing dresses with stompy boots. Akris too got in on the act, teaming fluid lace gowns, with wet-look thigh-high boots.

Mood board: Akris’ Albert Kreimler is the master of unifying art and fashion. When other brands appear to seek out partnerships for Instagrammable gimmicks or quick cultural validity, the designer imbues his art- or architecture-inspired collections with integrity and passion. His recent collaborative roster has included Geta Bratescu and Alexander Girard. For S/S 2020, the artist was taken with the work of 1903-born Italian painter Antonio Calderara, whose figurative work moved into experimentations of colour and form in the mid-1950s, focusing on lines and squares, and incorporating the mist of Lake Orta in Vacciago, where he lived from the mid-1930s. This meant an opalising colour palette of white and black, suffused with glittering golds and silvers, embodied in molten tailoring, fluid dresses, relaxed suiting and gowns embellished with graphic mosaic, in sequin silk, lurex jersey and pearlised suede.

Finishing touches: At the head of the catwalk stood a huger replica of the Akris’ signature trapezoidal tote, the ‘Ai,’ which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. 
The design was originally inspired by a pavilion built by the Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, and its geometric shape has become a design code of the brand.
 Its silhouette was updated for spring and worn on the catwalk strung on the waist as a bumbag, or seen in its newer version the Aicon.

Best in show: A series of gauzy geometric looks, like a silk georgette kaftan and a flared trouser suit nodded to the square colour blocked tones in Calderara’s Pittura (1960).

Moodboard: In a fashion climate that is now surprisingly shifting faster than anyone could have predicted, the jumpsuit has suddenly waned and given way to the rise of, well, the suit. This, of course, is not a trend for Akris, but the brand’s very ‘raison d’être'. It adds a fresh layer of relevance to a house that has always rooted for realistic, comfortable clothes and discreet, yet ultra luxurious chic. On Sunday, Albert Kriemler doubled down on these elements and presented, in an exceptionally narrow catwalk at the Grand Palais (he wanted his audience to really see the quality of the clothes), one of his finest collections to date.

Team work: Akris’ relationship to the arts and artists is another constant, and this season was no exception. Kriemler got inspired by not one but two artworks: Richard Artschwager’s All in Good Time, a series of exclamation points made out of horsehair, an unexpected material with no previous art history references and Goethe’s Farbtafel series, through which the German poet explored his theory of colour. Both were used literally in the collection, not only as ideological inspiration (‘fashion is a conversation between a woman and her clothes, that she is her best self and free. This is what guides my designs and what the exclamation marks are for,’ explained the designer) but also quite literally.

Best in show: The show was opened, surprisingly, by Coco Rocha clad in a crepe suit printed with colourful squares taken from Goethe’s series, and evolved from there, becoming not louder, but more and more discreet. And yet the most toned-down pieces were also the most effective. Peppered with copper-coloured leather boots and a dash of colour, the exquisitely cut suits, ivory pea coats, knee-length skirts and large masculine trousers read as the kind of pieces any women would love to wear. There were also, for the bolder spirits, bigger pieces including an embroidered metallic velvet kimono, a tan suede jacket and an oversized hooded navy blue shearling coat. They all had just the right proportions of sass and chic, and this is what this season’s elegance is being measured by.

‘I was fascinated by the light in her eyes. She embodied the spirit and life force of a young person,’ explains Akris’ creative director Albert Kriemler, of his first meeting with nonagenarian multimedia artist Geta Brătescu. After discovering Brătescu’s work at Athens’ Documenta 14 fair in 2017, Kriemler visited the Romanian artist in her notebook-stacked, artwork-lined Bucharest studio in February 2018, to discuss the possibility of working together on a fashion collaboration.

Kriemler is renowned for his art-fuelled take on fashion. For Akris’ A/W 2018 collection, shimmering gold accents nodded to the work of Gustav Klimt, while the colourful figurative prints in the brand’s S/S 2018 offering evoked the wooden doll designs of Alexander Girard. Kriemler’s S/S 2019 collection for the Swiss house is an ode to Brătescu’s playful and experimental aesthetic, and features references to a variety of her artworks, spanning photomontage and abstract portraiture. Sadly, Brătescu was never able to see the collaboration fully realised on the catwalk. She passed away at the age of 92, two weeks before the Akris S/S 2019 show at Paris Fashion Week.

‘The spirit of joyfulness and humour pervades Brătescu’s oeuvre,’ says Kriemler. ‘I also wanted to imbue my collection with this joie de vivre.’ Fluid shapes abound in the collection, from long pleated skirts to gauzy jackets, transparent kaftans to relaxed tailoring, in tan, icy blues, sherbet pink and black. A series of greyscale prints nod to Brătescu’s 1974 photomontage series ‘Magnets in the City’, which saw horseshoe magnets collaged onto images of public spaces around Bucharest. Silver magnets also act as sculptural closures on tailored jackets. ‘Brătescu’s work acts as a metaphor for how humans are attracted to each other – or not!’ Kriemler says. ‘It’s also a symbol of willpower and determination.’

This week, Hauser & Wirth celebratesAkris' and Geta Brătescu's collaboration with two special presentations in Zurich, one of which features a unique archival presentation of the fashion brand's works, and the other, a considered selection of works on paper exploring the artist’s unique approach to drawing, line, and form, organised in collaboration with Ivan Gallery.  Over the past decade, Brătescu focused predominantly on working with the line as a structuring principle. For Akris' spring collection, thick graphic lines and bold colour blocking nod to Brătescu's captivation with line and shape, while a series of abstract figurative prints, emblazoned across ponchos, cross-body bags and polo shirts, reflect her playful experimentations with self-portraiture. ‘Brătescu’s way of seeing line as the backbone of her art relates very much to a designer’s work’, Kriemler adds. ‘Fashion begins with this. It is always the line that defines the silhouette.’ 

INFORMATION

‘Geta Brătescu. The Power of the Line’ is on view until 27 April. For more information, visit the Hauser & Wirth website, Akris website

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Mood board: This season, Akris traded the Palais de Tokyo for the Pavillon Ledoyen to present the brand’s latest collection. Situated just behind the Petit Palais, the permanent tent with transparent walls might have been a different setting, but the Swiss house remains as consistent as ever when it comes to the style and the philosophy of its collections. This time, Albert Kriemler – aka the man who, every season, teaches the fashion crowd a new and fascinating art history story – built his collection through his relationship with a female artist.

Team work: Kriemler met the Romanian artist Geta Brătescu last year at documenta Kassel in Germany, and would bump into her again when she represented her country at the Venice Biennale in 2017. That sparked the beginning of a collaboration built on the artist’s wide-spanning work, which went from dismally grey life-size magnet sculptures (displayed, back in the 70’s, in the streets of a Soviet-era Bucharest… and in the catwalk during the show) to later-in-life, more playful and colourful collages. Sadly, the nonagenarian Brătescu never got to see the fruits of the collaboration: she died two weeks ago.

Best in show: The collection then came across as a moving – and technically accomplished – homage to her, starting with a series of trouser-top and jacket ensembles featuring a digital print of the magnet sculptures, and evolving progressively, almost imperceptibly towards more colourful looks including  a long ivory dress with an overblown abstract print and chiffon numbers with her red figure collages. Elsewhere, there were pleated skirts in pale blue and silk evening dresses in shades of neon pink and peach.

Mood Board: In the era of #MeToo, it’s tempting for fashion to resort to so-called ‘feminist’ gimmicks to make a statement. But that’s not Albert Kriemler’s style. The Swiss designer has a knack for subtlety and a way to avoid anything too loud or obvious. Still, in the dawn of a new feminist movement, he was thinking of the place women hold in the public arena, especially in creative businesses. It prompted him to look back in order to reflect on the future, picking 1900s Vienna as his source of inspiration. Overblown drawings by Egon Schiele (who, not a month ago, was at the centre of a controversy involving the #TimesUp movement and his erotic works) decorated the venue. Kriemler was thinking of Alma Mahler-Werfel’s salon, Madame d’Ora’s photographs and Adele Bloch-Bauer’s suffragism at a time when the position of women in society was changing dramatically… actually, much more than today.

Best in show: If the inspiration was historical, the execution stayed clear of any too literal references. Instead, it distilled every 1900s influence into a luxurious, contemporary wardrobe for a modern woman; not a socialite or a lady of leisure, but a truly active woman. Which explained the abundance of masculine trousers, worn with silk chiffon blouses, tuxedo blazers or chunky knits. As in every strong woman’s wardrobe, leather was omnipresent, in the shape of pencil skirts and jackets featuring zipper details that could open, nodding to an art nouveau silhouette. Even the evening gowns – minimal, sleeveless chiffon numbers – were designed to be lived in. The only openly historical concession Kriemler made to 1900s Vienna was in the palette, a mix of emerald greens, electric blues, light burgundy and golden yellow reminiscent both of Schiele and Gustav Klimt.

Finishing touches: Accessories were low key, the only exception being the handbags, some of them big enough to carry all of a woman’s essential possessions, most of them more moderately sized, but – even the evening ones – still able to hold way more than just a lipstick and an ID card. There were ultra chunky scarves too – yet another nod to feminine comfort and freedom.

Poster art: Loewe loves a poster-themed invitation, so for its S/S 2018 men’s presentation, the Madrid-based label opted for a fold-out of a model lounging by a pool at Salvador Dalí’s house in Cadaqués, Catalonia. The poster, part of the brand’s spring lookbook, was created in collaboration with graphic design studio and regular collaborators M/M Paris. Just like the windows of a home, it featured sleek rectangular cutouts. 

Home comforts: Designers were keeping house for S/S 2018, with a series of invitations revelling in domestic bliss. Anya Hindmarch’s came complete with a branded bar of soap, while Miu Miu’s was lined with a layer of sponge – what chicer tools for kitchen chores? More study-focused, Chalayan’s women’s invitation came complete with a pink Post-it note and JuunJ’s with a white collar. Dries Van Noten’s menswear invitation was printed with a retro office interior, boasting an old IBM computer.

True romance: In London, a host of show invitations nodded to nostalgia. Burberry’s featured an image by Dafydd Jones, of two students at the Magdalen Commemoration Ball at Oxford University in 1988, lying in formal clothing on the grass. Simone Rocha’s fold-out included two machine stitched-red figures with gothic trailing threads. Also otherworldly, the invitation to Thom Browne’s women’s show in Paris featured a card with a hand written poem speculating on the possibilities of dreams.

Feeling blue: The hue du jour during Paris men’s, blue accents were seen across the city’s invitations. At Louis Vuitton, an inky stripe completed the brand’s luggage-tag-inspired offering. At Yohji Yamamoto, a transparent black envelope encased a paper concertina printed with various global typescripts, which folded from a piece of sky blue card.

Box of tricks: Gucci presented its show attendees with a metal tin inspired by old pharmacy boxes. Its lid featured a mythical illustration taken from a German alchemical manuscript from the early 1700s, and opened to reveal a sheet of branded, chemist-inspired wrapping paper. Concealed inside? A thread holder, aromatic paper, five candles and a packet of matches. Talk about a hot ticket!

Bookworms: During the Paris womens’ shows, designers encouraged front rowers to engage in a spot of light reading or doodling. At Yohji Yamamoto, a yellow paged notepad was bound in plastic; at Hermès, guests were treated to a booklet listing the components of the brand’s 46 catwalk looks and a poem penned by Jarvis Cocker called ‘Hermès Colours’.

Orient express: Designers looked to Japan for their menswear show invitation inspirations. Take Paul Smith, which mailed guests a scaly plastic fish inscribed with Japanese typography. Or Emporio Armani, who printed an inky Oriental floral pattern onto its fabric-covered invitation. At Lanvin, guests kept themselves cool with a polka dot fan.

Band aid: Brands bought the entrance cues of music venues to the catwalk. From lanyards at Fendi and Versus, and barcoded tickets at Vetements, to sticky yellow wristbands at Marques’Almeida, we’d never felt more like we were with the band.

Hole in one: Designers brought cutouts to their catwalk invitations. Take the circular punches in Craig Green’s offering, evoking the hole motifs in his menswear designs, or the undulating curves in the Akris invitation, which nodded to a plywood sculpture by Alexander Girard (an inspiration behind the brand’s women’s collection). Or the circle cutout of a surreal horizon at Dirk Bikkembergs, and a viewfinder-like chink in the invitation for Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s debut for Chloé. Talk about making the cut!

Material world: Folds of fabrics acted as keepsake invitations. For Dries Van Noten’s women’s show and Luke and Lucie Meier’s debut at Jil Sander, the designers opted for subtle cream shades of fabric, printed with bold black typography. Marni’s women’s invitation featured a fold-out handkerchief finished with messy loops of thread, while Carven’s came with a pouting beaded fish. At Rick Owens’ women’s show, a scarf was printed with an illustration of a futurist sculpture by Thayaht, while at Tsatsas, the German accessories brand created a fabric invitation printed with an image of a rusty shipping liner.

Touch points: Textures were of top importance for S/S 2018, with Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani opting for invitations in sumptuous leather – a white calfskin envelope for the former’s women’s show, and a tan leather invitation for the latter’s men’s offering. At Marni’s menswear show, creative director Francesco Risso favoured a tactile invitation printed on corrugated cardboard.

Clear view: Brands both emerging and established opted for invitations encased in cellophane. Kiko Kostadinov used a press stud to fasten a white strip of paper inside a glossy sheer plastic envelope. For Prada’s men’s show, the brand enclosed a white cardboard sleeve for a ‘Draft Novel’ inside a clear tearable pouch.

When guests arrived at the Akris S/S18 show in the basement of the Palais de Tokyo on Sunday, they didn’t expect to see an installation of colourful, life-size wooden toys with naïf faces staring back at them. The space resembled a Gulliver-esque children’s playroom in the land of Brobdingnag – except the crèche had been invaded by the works of the New York-born, Florence-raised artist Alexander Girard. 

From the Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera to the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, Akris creative director Albert Kriemler often suffuses his collections with design references and collaborations. Indeed, Girard, who excelled at architecture as well as interior, furniture and textile design, inspired not just the Swiss fashion house’s recent runway set, but the whole collection.

‘Last year, I saw the exhibition “Alexander Girard: a Designer’s Universe” at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein,’ explained Kriemler backstage, adding that he was instantly obsessed with his work. ‘I ended up going three more times and found myself fascinated by the way Girard worked with colours and by the incredible scope of his work. That’s how I ended up calling my friend Rolf Fehlbaum, the chairman emeritus of Vitra, and we started thinking about a collaboration.’

The show opened with a sleek sleeveless coat printed with the same colourful characters that were in its background, who also made their way into chiffon dresses, midi skirts and trouser suits (what a way to twist a workwear staple). Elsewhere, more minimalist strapless and V-neck mini dresses, and tailored trousers in black and navy satin duchesse, featured embellished 3D details, resembling graphic blooms. These were inspired by a plywood sculpture by Girard, made from layers of undulating carvings.

A selection of Alexander Girard’s folkloric and colourful wooden dolls formed the backdrop to the Akris S/S18 runway set

But Kriemler’s love affair with Girard’s work is far from just a one-season fling. ‘Alas, I have no childhood memories of Girard,’ he says humorously when asked if there was a sense of nostalgia linked to the sense of cheerfulness and naïveté omnipresent in the artist’s work – most notably seen in a black chiffon dress, featuring childlike drawings of faces drawn in white, like chalk on a blackboard.

Kriemler has known and loved his work for more than 20 years. ‘I have even met Girard’s family and dined in The Compound in Santa Fe – the last of the wonderful restaurants Girard created where you can still book a table. Girard spent a lot of time in Santa Fe, and being able to experience the light of that setting at an altitude of 2,000m was so new to me, and made me understand his sense of colour’.

This experience also helped shape a collection in which every single colour was taken from Girard’s creative canon. ‘Ultimately, what I wanted was to show how warm and joyful his expression of elegance is,’ Kriemler explains. ‘How Girard’s work captured the spirit of the moment and is timeless because he always had in mind how much we as human beings need beauty and joy.’ Mission accomplished.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Akris website and the Alexander Girard website

Scene setting: Albert Kriemler’s collection explored the subconscious relationship that women have with coats and bags – pieces they pick up or slip into before embarking upon their day. The designer is renowned for his collaboration with artists and architects, from Sou Fujimoto to Thomas Ruff, and for A/W 2017, he teamed up with the Canadian artist Rodney Graham on a series of self-portraits of the artist donning an overcoat. These portraits hung on the walls of the show space at the Palais de Tokyo, viewed through glass screens that were positioned on the catwalk. Graham himself also sat front row, and was embraced by Kriemler as he took his bow at the show’s finale.

Mood board: The timeless colour palette – composed of black, aubergine, navy, white and grey – featured on elegant knitwear, sheer dresses and trouser suits. A chunky oversized cardigan and pocket detail shift dress provided a single flourish of fuchsia, while coats – the main motif behind the collection were imagined in furs, tweeds, leather, plaids and with geometric cut-out details.

Best in show: The black and white photographic self-portraits positioned on the walls of the space were also imagined on the backs of a series of coats at the finale. The images, which feature Graham in the various stages of putting on a coat, were presented almost as a dynamic flip book as four models stood together, the images presented chronologically in their various stages of application.

‘It started with an idea for the most simple bag,’ explains Akris creative director Albert Kriemler of the brand’s transformative Ai bag. ‘I wanted to create an architectural bag with a visual appearance referencing the “A” for Akris and for Albert,’ he muses.

Versatility was a key element of the original Ai's design. It subsequently comes in three sizes and can be unfolded from its trapezoidal closed shape into a tote as well as a bucket style.

For A/W 2016 Kriemler has built upon the Ai’s metamorphic principals with the introduction of the house’s ‘Create your Aidentity’ programme this month. ‘In a time when you can get everything in every colour everywhere, the desire for customisation and personalisation is awakening,’ says Kriemler of the bespoke service that starts at £985.

In store customers can choose from a selection of 15 coloured cervocalf leathers, several options for handles, including python, along with their dream bag’s metal hardware and closures. ‘It’s for women who want to express their individuality,’ Kriemler sums up, ‘And, of course, you can have yours monogrammed.’

INFORMATION

For more information visit Akris website

Mood board: Albert Kriemler's recent trip to Africa inspired the deep, earthy, strata reds used for his autumn collection at Akris. The designer rightly enthused that 'red is everything from orange to aubergine' and this expansive, but cohesive palette gave the clothes a thumping heart.

Best in show: Though Kriemler played around with zebra and leopard prints, his best pieces were dead simple silhouettes, in weighty wools or cashmeres, and completely print free. These included the marvellous double faced two tone capes, cloaks and coats, as well as his whole series of rich velvets.

Finishing touches: Nearly every look was accompanied by a straight heel, knee high boots with a rugged sole. Many were in bright orange, a zesty counterpoint to Kriemler's signature folded trapeze bag now offered in orange ostrich skin.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

2

Models at Hussein Chalayan’s Paris show who took a shower on the catwalk, allowing their soluble clothes to melt away

12

BMX bikers and professional skateboarders catching some air on the ramps at Jimmy Choo’s menswear show, held inside a London leisure centre

19

Giant Roman arches on the Kenzo catwalk with models sweeping through on a conveyor belt

80

Crushed cars, 12 motorcycles popping wheelies, one monster truck, two spinning cop cars and two BMWs exploding into flames at Philipp Plein’s men’s show

20

A-listers playing blackjack and roulette at Chanel’s casino set in Paris’ Grand Palais shows

3

Lifesized fake carwashes, featuring fluffy rotating brushes and bubble machines, on Jeremy Scott’s runway at Moschino

700

Plexiglas panelshanging from the ceiling at the Prada men’s show      

200

Metres of carpet printed with snakes and roses and 14 bespoke upholstered screens on the catwalk at Gucci

30

Buddhist monks, in matching red robes, chanting before the start of Prabal Gurung’s women’s show

100,000

People who attended New York fashion week versus 2.4 million people who live-streamed the shows at home

1

Designer down during a post-show runway lap: Tommaso Aquilano, of Aquilano Rimondi, tripped and face-planted in Milan

820

Free tickets that Givenchy gave to the public on a first-come, first-served basis to its women’s show in New York

12

Strong, female, professional dancers carrying other women like backpacks and papooses at the Rick Owens’ show

7

Earth mountains created by artist Maya Lin for Phillip Lim’s New York show

50

Oriental rugs hanging from the ceiling of the harem-like show space at Antonio Marras

136

Digital ‘windows’ flashing videos of clouds, rain storms, blue skies, lights and models walking at the Canali men’s show

17

Miniature outfits hanging on a lifesized fake tree installed inside Milan’s 18th century Palazzo Clerici for Agnona

10

Colour-blocked tents created by Danish artist FOS for Phoebe Philo’s Céline show

17

Miniature outfits hanging on a lifesized fake tree installed inside Milan’s 18th century Palazzo Clerici for Agnona

3

Giant robots who dressed models on a conveyor belt after Courtney Love had performed Celebrity Skin at Philipp Plein’s women’s show

120

Lucky guests treated to a private dance performance by six Michael Clark Company dancers wearing Pringle menswear at Galleria Sozzani in Milan

6

Hours for carpenters to build a lifesized section of Sou Fujimoto’s House N inside Paris’ Grand Palais for Akris

 16

Oars on each of the two boats at the rowing-inspired Moncler Gamme Bleu men’s show

4

Mariachi singers belting out songs during Brian Atwood’s presentation at Milan’s Museo Bagatti Valsecchi

40

Bare-chested men, in knee-high socks and shiny shoes, reading newspapers in deckchairs in the courtyard before the Berluti show

20,000

Gallons of water to fill the mini lagoon in which the models frolicked at Tommy Hilfiger’s New York show

300

LED water lilies on the runway at Giorgio Armani  

8.5

Height in feet of the giant Balthus cat on the runway at Arthur Arbesser’s show in Milan. It was later cut into three pieces and taken home by the Austrian designer

1

Cheeky selfie taken by Alexander Wang in front of a pool of water during his final show for Balenciaga

3,000

Electric blue delphiniums planted on a temporary hill (that took 30 days to build) in the middle of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée for the Dior show

40

Models at Dolce & Gabbana who took to the runway with cellphones in hand, snapping selfies

Albert Kriemler is fashion’s most architecture-obsessed designer. Nearly all of his shows for Swiss brand Akris glow with an architectural elan and many of his collections owe their inspiration to architects themselves.

Such was the case at Akris' recent S/S 2016 Paris show when Kriemler not just channelled, but actually collaborated with Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. Fujimoto’s most famous works – from the Serpentine Pavilion to his House N and Naoshima Pavilion – were all plastered on Kriemler’s mood board backstage. Many of these ideas made their way onto actual fabric development and were even recreated in the life-sized show set modeled after House N.

Wallpaper*: Sou, how did you connect with Albert?
Sou Fujimoto: We met through a mutual friend, the photographer Iwan Baan. Then we just had a casual talk really about my architecture concept. He came to Japan to visit some of my projects. So then gradually he tried to reinterpret my architectural thinking into his fashion thinking.

Albert, how did you do that?
Albert Kriemler: What’s so great about Sou’s architecture is that you don’t only look at great, unexpected architecture but that you actually feel it. When I visited the Naoshima Pavilion, I’ll never forget that moment. It looked to me like a diamond, like a jewel so that inspired the collection. Fujimoto’s forest of music – the competition he won for the Budapest Music Hall – inspired a neck cut seam, but also a broderie anglaise. And two more houses, the finale dresses, I took from his own description – he said, "It’s funny the houses are silver covered and they had mirrored the nature and things." So I wanted the dresses to mirror that effect.

Sou, is this the first time you’ve jumped into fashion?
Sou Fujimoto: I designed a shop for Sacai a few years ago. But never a real fashion collaboration. Never. It is quite exciting because I am not a good fashion guy.

What are you wearing today?
Sou Fujimoto: Issey Miyake.

That makes you a fashion guy!
Sou Fujimoto: Well….[laughs]. Finally, through the conversations with Albert, I realised the strong similarity between fashion and architecture. They both create something between the human body and the world. Transparency, translucence or opaqueness – previously, I was only thinking of these themes on an architectural scale. So this opened the door to another realm.

Tell us about the show set?
Sou Fujimoto: The motif is a House N, one of my private houses. He wanted to use this house, so I sent the drawings and he rearranged it to fit the show space. I finally saw it today finished with the trees and it’s so nice. 
Albert Kriemler: I am most excited about how it stands here. Everyone who came to our show tonight walked through the house and that was really important for me.

Sou, it would appear that Albert knows a heck of a lot about architecture...
Sou Fujimoto: He is quite good at seeing architecture. I gave him my book and he read all of the text. And it’s a big book. Now, he knows more about my architecture than I do!

Mood board: Backstage at the Akris show, Albert Kriemler’s mood board was neatly plastered with completed work and in-progress sketches by Sou Fujimoto, one of the many architects that the Swiss designer is both obsessed and inspired by. Fujimoto’s clean lines and work with transparency informed not only the white-scaffolding set wrapped in live green plants but also Kriemler’s plastic-tiled, cork shingled and knit-pleated clothes.

Best in show: There were great moments of stone-shaped perforation that had been laser cut into the shoulders or knit tops or crisp cotton shirts but the best looks in this show were created from Kriemler’s custom-made red and white flecked tweed that were inspired by Fujimoto red pen sketches.

Finishing touches: Flat lace-up leather shoes in navy and black were given a sporty edge with rugged white soles. Meanwhile, Akris’ A-frame bag, forever the architectural emblem of the house, is now cut in perforated leather or in shiny visor-like sheer plastic.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Mood board: 'It's all about the jacket,' enthused Albert Kriemler in his Akris show press notes. 'The jacket is a parka, a caban and a hoodie, always a blazer, it's a suit, it could be a vest, debardeur, a qipao and a redingote, a dress and even a gown.' Kriemler said it all better than we could have... the only thing missing from this description of his winter collection were the neutral colours he chose, like puddy, sand and stone rendered in jersey, tricotine and Akris' signature double-faced cashmere.

Best in show: The double-faced cashmere pocket front wide pants and matching jacket in heathered grey looked like a hyper luxe, super soft sweat suit that a woman wouldn't be ashamed to wear out of the house.

Finishing touches: The models carried enormous art-school sized portfolio cases like grey flat clutches and wore fierce pointed booties with curved stiletto heels that looked like claws.

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Fashion week, these days, is about much more than just the collections. Showmanship is the name of game, and in the meticulously executed sartorial extravaganzas, the sound space is an element that no producer or designer can afford to overlook. Music royalty - past, present and future - is enlisted to ensure a full assault on the senses. Here, we bring you Paris Fashion Week's catwalk mega mix from the S/S 2015 womenwear collections.

WEDNESDAY 24/09

Dries Van Noten
'Strange Entity' by Max Colombie AKA Oscar And The Wolf, in collaboration with Sem Jan

THURSDAY 25/09

Roland Mouret
'Don't Go' by Izzy Lindqwister; 'Memorabilia' by Soft Cell; 'New Dorp. New York' by SBTRKT (feat Ezra Koenig); 'La Poupee Qui Fait' by Serge Gainsbourg
Music production: Nano de Clausel

Rick Owens
'Piano Concerto 1, Preludium' by Wojciech Kilar
Music production: Jeff Judd

FRIDAY 26/09

Loewe
'Imagin' by Dark Sky; 'Music for 18 Musicians Section 4' by Steve Reich; 'Piano Phase' by Steve Reich; 'Music for 18 Musicians Section 5' by Steve Reich
Music production: Michel Gaubert

Dior
'Ouverture' by Koudlam; 'Loss (Regis Version)' by Ike Yard; 'The Magnificent Bukkake (1756-1785)' by Koudlam; 'Shake' by Cowboy Rhythmbox
Music production: Michel Gaubert

Isabel Marant
'New Dorp. New York' by SBTRKT (feat Ezra Koenig); 'Pump Me Up' by Trouble Funk; 'Electrodub' by Daniele Baldelli; 'Feel Up' by Grace Jones; 'New Dorp. New York' by SBTRKT (feat Ezra Koenig)

Maison Martin Margiela
'Assassin de la Police' by Cut Killer; 'Sweet Harmony' by The Beloved

SATURDAY 27/09

Haider Ackermann
'One Space' by Senjan Jansen

SUNDAY 28/09

Kenzo
Exclusive mix by Disclosure

Céline
'This Woman's Work' by Kate Bush; 'Mishima / Closing' by Philip Glass; 'Need This (Radio Mix)' by Bok Bok & Tom Trago; 'In The Upper Room Dance No. 1' by Philip Glass; 'Vector' by Bok Bok & Tom Trago

Chloé 
'Strangers'; 'Numb'; 'Sour Times' all by Portishead

Akris
'Says' Composed and performed by Nils Frahm

Givenchy
'Radioactivity' by Kraftwerk; 'Just A Clutch' by The Martinez Brothers; 'Blondee' by The Martinez Brothers

MONDAY 29/09

Stella McCartney
'Imprint' by Must Die feat. Tkay Maidza; 'Bugatti' by Tiga; 'Kero Kero Bonito' by Kero Kero Bonito; 'Jane' by Girlpool; 'The Rain That Never Came' by Apache Sun
Music production: Tony Farsides

Wunderkind
'Drown (Bonus Track)' by EMA; 'Rollin' & Tumblin'' by Kyoka; 'Ring Of Fire' by Wall Of Voodoo; 'Shanghai Freeway' by Fatima Al Qadiri; 'Locust' by &ME; 'In A Landscape (Solo Piano)' by John Cage & Sylvano Bussotti
Music production: Javier Peral

Saint Laurent
'1,2,3' by Aleide
Original song written and recorded by Aleide

TUESDAY 30/09

Chanel
'I'm Not Scared' by The Pet Shop Boys; 'Transperu' by Koudlam; 'Khan' by E-Versions
Music production: Michel Gaubert

Valentino
'Body Double' by Pino Donaggio; 'Metti Una Sera A Cena' by Ennio Morricone & Edda Dell'Orso; 'Outside Looking' by Michael Nyman; 'Metti Una Sera A Cena' by Ennio Morricone and Edda Dell'Orso

Alexander McQueen
'Kodama' by Haruomi Hosono (from the O.S.T. Tales of Genji); 'Red Sex' by Vessel; 'Fairy Link' by Susumu Yokota; 'Drowned In Water And Light' by Vessel; 'Shambala Tsushin' by Haruomi Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band; 'Soul Love' by David Bowie
Music production: John Gosling

WEDNESDAY 01/10

Louis Vuitton
'The Sound Of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel
Music production: Leopold Ross and Michel Gaubert

Moncler Gamme Rouge
'Auto Music 2' by Brian Reitzell; 'Home: "Ruitor"' by Richard Pinhas; 'Il Sogno Di Una Cosa' by Kreidler; 'Prismatic Reflections' by Bitchin Bajas
Music production: Frédéric Sanchez

Miu Miu
'Female Trouble' by Melvin & Redd Kross; 'Past, Present and Future' by the Shangri-Las; 'Past, Present and Future' by Giddle & Boyd; 'Piano Sonata no 2: Moonlight' by Beethoven; '----S' by Moon Relay; '///////L' by Moon Relay; 'Female Trouble' by Divine

Albert Kriemler's fashion shows for Akris are almost always architectural in shape, but this season was drawn specifically with right angles in mind. The art-loving Kriemler name checked Kazimir Malevich, a Russian abstract artist, as the driving force behind his prominent use of the square. But even if squares and rectangles made their way into form and construction, the clothes at Akris are always distilled down to their minimalist core. So no funny business here - just a smooth and subtle use of box shapes either on tone-on-tone jacquards, or on rigid square netting made from silk, cotton or jersey that allowed for a graphic peek-a-boo game on coats, jackets and complete suits. Not all of his straight lines looked ruler perfect: the fusing of sheer chiffon with strategically covered panels did not ring as sharp as they should have on cocktail dresses. But overall, Akris delivered. As a bonus, there was a reinvented tennis visor with a low, sloping, architectural looking brim designed by venerable London milliner Stephen Jones.

Acne creative director Jonny Johansson has been on such a roll in popping out relevant trends that the Swedish based brand has quickly become the go-to label for girls looking for a quick fashion fix. For spring, his never-fail tailoring got stiffened into hardened silk and then sliced into new shapes including strapless bell shaped dresses, cropped mini men's shorts and sleeveless jackets. A lot of women go to Acne for their reinvented basics but Johansson nonetheless proposes a lot of hard-core fashion on his runways. This season he promised to dress a girl for all moments of her life - from the bathtub to the office, but you couldn't help but notice that most of it was tinged with fresh sex appeal. Deep V-front jackets and dresses made everything sexier (as did the figure-hugging, phallic-printed slinky silk dresses and low long pencil skirts worn with glossy gold jewellery), while leather racked up an impressive showing despite the summer season. There were also skintight khaki leather cargo biker shorts, as well as a peacock green leather short-sleeved leisure suit. Get ready for a hot summer, girls.

This is the tenth year that Albert Kriemler has shown his Akris collection in Paris, a milestone that the Swiss designer celebrated with a collaboration with artist Thomas Ruff. A certifiable art lover, Kriemler chose seven of Ruff's cosmic-inspired images and digitally reproduced them across several looks in the last third of the show. The Night Series, a group of works that Ruff created using residual light amplifiers in urban areas near Düsseldorf from 1992-1996, glowed with an otherworldly green over trapeze capes and matching suiting. The ma.r.s. series featured the bumpy, boiled surface of Mars, based on black and white images captured by a NASA orbiter. Another, entitled Cassini, included streams of light shooting across juicy blood red orange mink. This space action came to a big bang conclusion in the finale where Kriemler buried swirling trails of LED lights into sharp black suits, filmy dresses and even voluminous tulle ball gowns. Though the dresses effectively guaranteed his woman's chances of lighting up a room, this last move felt just a tad gimmicky in an otherwise strong show. We much preferred Kriemler's expert handling of his two-tone astrakhan dresses, the snow-white curled lambswool sleeveless coats, and the black hooded lambswool dress worn under a wool trapeze coat: all of which proved exactly why Kriemler is still a player in Paris after all these years.

It took fashion designer Arthur Arbesser exactly three seasons to figure out what most Milan-based designers haven't realised in an entire lifetime: the coolest slice of the city is veiled behind the closed doors of its private homes. For the staging of his A/W 2014 womenswear presentation, the 30-year-old Vienna-born designer lassoed a beautifully designed 1920s apartment over dinner one night in Milan.

'I kept asking everyone at the table, "Does anyone have a grandmother or an aunt with a great home?'" recalls Arbesser, who worked at Giorgio Armani for seven years before launching his own label in 2013. His dinner companion, the architect Luca Cipelletti, offered up his stately sixth floor apartment where mid-century furniture by Gio Ponti, Ico Parisi and Guglielmo Ulrich contrasts with more radical pieces by Ettore Sottsass and Norman Foster.

Already, Cipelletti's apartment looks like an exhibition space thanks to the series of wall cutouts, visually linking the rooms. Giving the illusion of an almost reflective effect, the cutouts provided the perfect foil for Arbesser's structured, menswear-tinged fashion collection.     

'We tried to make a connection and a conversation between the furniture and fashion in each room,' explains Cipelletti, who specialises in museum design. In the dining room for example, vintage Joy Division vinyls from Cipelletti's personal collection serve as place mats on the Norman Foster clear glass table, setting the tone for a transparent theme that continues with a collection of Murano glass ashtrays and a sheer ballskirt and pants in the opposite corner.

In the living room, an artwork in grease and graphite that was just recently hand-painted on the wall by British artist David Tremlett creates a striking backdrop for Arbesser's tomboy pantsuit. A bold black and white dress, meanwhile, finds a home next to the radiator and tall chemical glasses and a printed Alcantara suit pops off the sea foam green bath tiles.

'Since the clothes are kind of androgynous, it's kind of great to have it in a man's apartment,' says Arbesser with a grin. 'Hopefully people will enjoy coming to a new space and seeing some Milan interiors.' And take it from us, they will.

In the living room, an artwork hand-painted on the wall by artist David Tremlett in grease and graphite, 'Trapeziums', creates a striking backdrop for Arbesser's tomboy pantsuit. A pair of Eames chairs, meanwhile, sandwich the 'Y-Tong' block table, designed by Luca Cipelletti and Bernard Dubois

A chair by Marcel Breuer (right) and Uglo Mulas' series of 'Waiting' photographs (showing Lucio Fontana at work) are the ideal accompaniment to the pared-down simplicity of Arbesser's structured pieces. 'Compass' by Olafur Eliasson drops down from the ceiling above