The Art of Alaïa

CREATIVE DIRECTOR PIETER MULIER BROADENS THE BELOVED HOUSE’S REACH, NEVER LOSING SIGHT OF ITS HERITAGE

By Anders Christian Madsen

One of the most talked-about shows this season, Alaïa was also one of the least seen. Staged in the optical-white surroundings of its Paris boutique, with guests perched on black mushroomed armchairs, the experience included just 150 people divided over three show slots. The collection, made entirely of Merino threads, earned Pieter Mulier his ravest reviews in the three years since becoming the first creative director to lead the house after the late Azzedine Alaïa. The show’s success was a chemical reaction founded in the hankering for simplicity of a digital fashion culture oversaturated by visual information but at once addicted to the rush of the bold statement.

Irreverently, Mulier stripped down his expression to the simplest of gestures: Merino garments presented on a white backdrop. But each of those garments was intensified in form, in creation, in painstaking detail. The result was a sense of macro-minimalism, the complex construction of which piqued the attention of a physical audience while jumping out of the screen of the digital one. Apart from the attendance of Naomi Campbell—to whom Alaïa is family—the show came with no other fireworks than the clothes themselves. On the internet, it became a sensation, still shared and gushed about months after its curtain call. The impact was the result of the philosophy with which Mulier has approached his domain at Alaïa.
After working for mastodons like Christian Dior and Calvin Klein under his friend Raf Simons—whose namesake label he started at—the 44-year-old Belgian designer has carved out a curious niche at Alaïa. A kind of petite super-brand, it is comfortable being small in size but determined to pack a punch. It’s a vision that cuts through the noise of present-day fashion, right into a bone of authenticity not often exposed in an industry of smoke and mirrors. The attitude is personified in Mulier, a designer of a frank, friendly, and fun disposition, whose societal observations shape the way he creates and presents his evolving idea of Alaïa.

In March, Mulier reflected on the powers and pitfalls of fashion in an in-depth conversation with Anders Christian Madsen.
Pieter, what comes up on your ‘suggested posts’ page on Instagram?

Owls, dogs, art… I love owls. They put cameras in the trees and follow the owl for months. It’s genius. It’s become so light, Instagram, that this excites me. My friends and I have groups on Instagram, so I receive dog videos and cooking videos all day long.

ANDERS CHRISTIAN MADSEN: Is social media noise to you?

PETER MULIER: I see Instagram as the biggest noise. It pushes everyone to do things that are not in our nature. It’s not our reality. During Fashion Week, I went to quite a few shows: Prada, Bottega, Loewe. Arriving at the show space and looking around you to see who’s invited, that’s noise. It’s like a circus now. People don’t even look at the clothes anymore. We forget, a little bit, the purpose of what we do.

ACM: How do you deal with that as a designer?

PM: It’s great for Alaïa because we don’t do anything like that. We do very small shows; we don’t invite influencers or stars unless they want to come. I try to make it as much about the clothes as possible. If I think about the fashion world now, 90 percent is noise. It’s more the people around it than the people who do it and the craft of it all. It’s all about the picture now. And it’s such a pity.

ACM: How do you see this manifesting?

PM: I see shows now where people make an effort just to go viral on Instagram. Or it’s a star that comes to a show and that show becomes all about that one person, which is so bizarre to me. It means we even think in moments now, not in a body of work.

ACM: Some brands feel they need influencers to keep growing. Is this something we’re imagining?

PM: I think we’re all imagining it. I don’t think it always relates to financial gain. I think brands get addicted to the attention this gives to you, and I think they see it as free advertising. As long as the name gets around, they don’t really care how. But here at Alaïa, the brand is growing and growing and growing without playing the game of social media.

ACM: To what degree do you engage?

PM: We do post things, but we take our time. We speak when we have something to say. Our shows are 50 people! The impact on social media should be minuscule. But we can feel that there’s a hunger from this audience for something different, for something more honest, maybe, and I also have this hunger. For our last show, we had these pants completely constructed from mille-feuille wool, which went viral. People really tapped into this astonishing craftsmanship of the atelier, without a star, without an influencer. Just from the emotion it gave them.

ACM: So essentially, it’s possible to create a buzz from discretion?

PM: If you don’t play the game and you’re not everywhere, people get curious why you’re not everywhere. You’re so used to seeing other brands on Instagram through paid advertising, a hundred times a day. If they did it opposite, they would be a hundred times more interesting. With Alaïa, you can look things up. You can google them. It takes more time for people to discover you than if you blasted an Instagram—but then on Instagram, people also swipe faster.

ACM: This season at The Row, the Olsens very much illustrated the power of the social media ban.

PM: I found that very, very strong. Marc Jacobs used to do it in New York. Remember when we had to put our phones in a little case? As soon as you take something away, people become interested. This is basically the idea of luxury now: If you can’t see it, if you can’t have it, if you have to wait, in the end, people like it. In the ’90s, we waited to see three silhouettes from a show in a newspaper, if we were lucky. You had to wait months for Vogue and L’Officiel to come out to see a collection.

ACM: I remember refreshing theFashionSpot.com on repeat to see the first looks from a Dior Homme show…

PM: I remember it would build up, with people adding another three looks and another three looks. I was so excited when the campaigns would come out: the vision, how a collection would be translated. Nowadays, every picture you post is a campaign. I found it very clever of [the Olsens] to shoot the looks and put them out like a little lookbook campaign. It was very beautiful.

ACM: Isn’t it also about actually using the visual possibilities of the digital world?

PM: Yes. Remember when Marc [Jacobs] shot all the girls from the side? He just changed the angle, but the simplest things work. For The Row to ask a photographer to shoot these perfect pictures of these perfect clothes is so the opposite of what we see now at shows, where we get bombarded by influencers. It’s so radical to put this pure perfection out.

ACM: How do you “dress” people at Alaïa?

PM: People do it themselves, which is more natural than just sending people a bag and a look. We made a Ballerina three years ago that sold very well; it just went naturally. Influencers bought it and were posting it. They liked it and it was good for their image to be linked to the brand. In the end, that’s the most beautiful. Back in the day, everyone was there to be a part of the house. Now, brands are ready to do whatever the influencers want just to get [the message] out, which I think is a big mistake.

ACM: After your show in January, you said you were hankering for simplicity.

PM: We wanted to do a lot with nearly nothing. It was that simple. Knitwear is the base of the legacy of Azzedine, and I found it so interesting to use one thread for everything: to go maximal with a concept so minimal; to go back to the base of what fashion is about, which is a thread.

ACM: Was it also your comment on the “quiet luxury” wave?

PM: Yes, because I think “quiet luxury” is more a merchandising term than anything else. It’s basically a way to sell well-made basics. For me, it’s not inspiring. It doesn’t mean anything in the end. But if people love that term, our last show was the most “quiet luxury” you can go: different shapes, really well-made.

ACM: What do you make of the reactions it got?

PM: We got great reviews and even people on social media were very interested in the technical aspect of how we did it, which is very rare nowadays, on this app. Nobody asks how. You look at a crocodile coat and say, “Ah, it’s a crocodile coat.” Our eye is so used to embroidery, to bling, that the idea of just one Merino wool thread excited them even more than an “über-luxurious” crocodile coat would have. It was another way of luxury. It went back to what clothes are about: how much you can do with a thread.

ACM: It’s the appeal of magic and illusion, isn’t it? People will forever be compelled by something they can’t understand. And that makes that crocodile coat less interesting.

PM: When I was younger, I found the perfect cashmere sweater. You dream of that kind of luxury when you’re young. Now, I don’t need that anymore. Luxury has become something different. It’s more the idea of something that’s luxury: something new, something I haven’t experienced before. When I talk to younger members of my family, luxury is about experiences. They spend their money differently than us, which is very interesting.

ACM: It’s the idea of something unique and limited, perhaps?

PM: That’s why we only did three shows of 50 people. It was the experience of those girls walking so close towards you, almost as if you were alone. We wanted to do it for five people at first. We couldn’t in the end—but it’s the idea of that. With the show in my apartment in Antwerp, it was the same thing: How can you make people feel unique in the way they look at clothes?

ACM: I always thought the preview session with the designer was the most luxurious experience.

PM: To share the intimacy of a studio, to look at the way it’s done, the process of creating clothes… You go into the brains of multiple people, who are quite insecure about what they’re doing. I always think this insecurity must be quite the experience to share. When I visit artists in their studios and you can feel they’re uncomfortable about showing their work in such an intimate place for them, I always find it very touching. The idea of doing a show for five people—maybe I’ll do it at one point. It’s interesting.

ACM: Intimacy is very much in the genes of Alaïa. We’ve all been raised on tales of Azzedine’s kitchen parties.

PM: For him, it was all about experience. He always showed the week after Couture on two days when everybody could come. The girls walked five or six shows a day and it was constant. Then they’d have lunch in the kitchen and go back. It felt very much like a family. But I’m not Azzedine. I have to find a new way to do it. It does help with the idea of exclusivity that you feel part of something. You’re not just there to look.

ACM: Has it been hard for you to live up to the expectations of the people who went to those kitchen parties?

PM: It hasn’t been easy, because you succeeded the designer who founded the house, and Azzedine was such a people person. So many people I’ve met—I could say a hundred—have told me, “Oh my god, he was one of my best friends.” Which I find genius. When he opened the doors to his kitchen and his house, he touched many people’s hearts. It’s a rare thing to do in fashion. But it’s not my name on this door, so to get as personal as Azzedine… I would never go so far. Also, I’m from the north and he was from the south. It’s not really in our culture to do that.

ACM: Instead, you opened the doors to your own home and did a show there.

PM: The closest I went was to invite everyone to Antwerp, to my house. In the beginning, people asked me why I wasn’t doing dinners in Azzedine’s kitchen. But it’s his space, it’s not mine. It would be quite ridiculous if I made a chicken for three people in his kitchen. I try to keep the concept of intimacy, but I won’t go as far as he did.

ACM: Has it been intimidating?

PM: Yes, because people do measure the experience of the past: the genius of the clothes mixed with that personal feeling he gave to all of it. But, as ugly as it sounds, you cannot build a brand on that. The name should become a brand now and less of a “maison.”

ACM: In that process, have you encountered resistance from the loyals—‘How dare you?’

PM: Many times. Especially in the beginning. Now, not so much. Time heals. I was never mad about it, because let’s say a designer took Raf’s brand, which I’m very close to. What would I think? Maybe I would be a little bit like, Is this going to work? I’d have doubts about it, because you’re emotionally invested in it. When people told me, they didn’t tell me to my face. They say it behind your back. I heard it many times. People wrote it to me on Instagram.

ACM: How did you react?

PM: It never really touched me, because I’m not here for them. I’m here for the new generation. The difficulty of this company is that people always thought Azzedine was for them. He was their secret in fashion. My job is to bring the name to a bigger audience, and, of course, for some people that’s difficult.

ACM: Would you ever go purely Pieter at Alaïa? Completely irreverent with your own vision?

PM: I would do it at another brand, but not here. When you think of the biggest fashion houses nowadays—Christian Dior, who changed fashion after the Second World War, and Chanel, who threw the corset away—Azzedine had the same. The codes are too important for me to say, Nah, I’m going to do me. Azzedine instilled something in French fashion that was so new, so accurate for that time, that I couldn’t just throw it away and do something else. The importance is still there, for many reasons. I think that when we do sensual, sexual, explicit clothes, we’re the only one. And that comes from the archive of Azzedine.

ACM: What is the goal now? What shape and size do you want this brand to be?

PM: I do not want to turn Alaïa into a huge thing. I would like to keep it human, which is also the reason why I came here: that you feel it’s not a machine. The moment there’s no human aspect to it anymore, that wouldn’t interest me. And the group that owns Alaïa agrees with this vision.

ACM: What does that mean?

PM: They see Alaïa as a kind of luxury that takes time. Of course, they want it to grow and for the new generation to get to know Alaïa, but they don’t push me to do logos, puffers, sneakers, or anything that can boom the business fast. It’s a luxury to work in a company like that.

ACM: In other words, limitation is a luxury?

PM: Azzedine used to say, “If you have one good idea a year, it’s a lot.” Even when it comes to constructing collections, we don’t do a coat in five fabrics and five colors. We do one. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. That also comes from Azzedine. He didn’t want options. We propose something. We don’t want to talk to everybody. The moment you talk to everybody, everybody has an opinion about you and that can be killing.

ACM: You’re part of this close-knit Belgian community of friends in the industry. Does it make a difference to you?

PM: It does. I see them very often, actually, but the strange thing is we never really talk about fashion. It’s more pure friendship than anything else. What I like is that we support each other and go to each other’s shows and all of that. But with Raf, we never talk about fashion. We do art. We talk about our dogs, life, boyfriends, food. I see it as a support system of people you can always rely on.

ACM: How much do you immerse yourself in fashion? Do you go shopping?

PM: I do. Honestly, I like it a lot. I know it’s not very glamorous but I do love to buy beautiful things. I just bought a Prada coat from the last women’s collection, and before that, some high-waisted Loewe jeans. I think it’s important to look at what other brands are doing, so once a month I go to the stores. I don’t buy a lot… I only buy Loewe, Prada, Miu Miu, and Bottega, of course.

ACM: What about art shopping?

PM: That was taught to me by friends a long time ago, and it becomes a little addiction. With art, we say we buy it, but Marc Jacobs once told me, We take care of it. I love it when collectors say that. With fashion, you buy it—that’s the difference. With artists, you also feel a pure freedom in what they can do. There’s no merchandising behind it.

ACM: Do you think fashion is too commercial now?

PM: Yes, way too commercial. I see shows of other brands and think, Why spend millions if you show that? The base of fashion is, if you show something, you have to be proud of it and say something. And if it only says “buy me,” there’s a big problem. Because the aspect of dreaming… We’re far beyond the dream of what fashion should be. We don’t want to see reality, because we have that on Instagram. We want to dream. With contemporary art, it’s sometimes very disturbing, but at least it makes you think and dream about something else. Fashion should be the same.

ACM: I sometimes hear people saying certain fashion is ‘too conceptual,’ which blows my mind. It should be!

PM: To go back to social media, let’s say you do a conceptual show, and then these conceptual clothes are sent to people that are not conceptual, that wear it, that post it. That circle is not round anymore. I still love Comme des Garçons because it’s only a proposition. Or what John [Galliano] does at Margiela. That lace couture collection doesn’t need to be sold. It’s a project that pushes fashion further. That’s luxury. I do hope that with gestures like John’s, or ours, it makes young generations think less in terms of merchandising.

ACM: How has Alaïa changed your life?

PM: Very much, on many levels. I always dreamed of being a creative director for many reasons, but before Alaïa called me, I said no to many. I always felt like it wasn’t the right match, or too big. Here, I feel a little bit like what I felt when I was very young working in fashion, with a small team, without the merchandisers. Everything I was used to from former jobs, it’s not here. My life changed because of that. I went back to the essence of what I think fashion is.

ACM: And how has it changed your personal life?

PM: Well, I sometimes get recognized in the street now. That’s it!