Pieter Mulier Shows His Final Collection for Alaïa

487

Pieter Mulier’s Alaïa took its final bow in Paris on Wednesday night. The designer showed a collection that was paired back, sexy, and just the right amount of nostalgic.

“This is my final collection for Maison Alaïa, a house of heart and soul, to which I have given mine,” wrote Mulier in the show notes. “This collection is not about me. It is about the Alaïa team — our family — and an expression of all we have learned, and felt, and loved across the past five years. Minimal, pure, essential. Stripped back, reduced to the very essence of Alaïa.
It is a reflection both on and of Azzedine’s work, marked with traces of myself. The passage of my time here.”

It’s hard to believe that Mulier was only at the brand for five years, so strong was his impact on the aesthetic identity of the house and its relevance in both pop culture and the broader fashion world. Not that Alaïa was ever “irrelevant,” but at the time of Azzedine Alaïa’s death they weren’t showing and rarely participated in the celebrity red carpet theatrics that generate brands so much of their press these days. And that was fine. Alaïa was all about the clothes, its namesake designer did things his way, and it worked. It worked so well that people had a hard time believing anyone could step into the great man’s shoes. And for three years, no one did.

Then, in 2021, Mulier was named creative director and from his first collection made it clear that he was more than up to the task. The clothes he created for Alaïa were sexy and cool and referred to the work of his predecessor without being hindered by it. At a time where it so often feels like new creative directors come into a house and throw out everything that came before them — no matter how integral to the brand’s identity and whether it worked or not — Mulier demonstrated restraint and deference while still moving the brand firmly forward.

His final collection for the house of Alaïa started off with a handful of body-hugging tank dresses like the ones Alaïa was so famous for in the ’90s. Then there were echoes of those old crocodile tail coats, elegant and restrained velvet suits, decadently voluminous coats, and those wonderfully full ruffled skirts.

“There are eternal totems of Alaïa that I had to address, to pay homage to — dresses of chiffon and transparent jersey, inlaid with crocodile, a personal homage, to my favorite Azzedine pieces,” wrote Mulier. “There are Alaïa proportions, timeless
yet reconsidered for today. Even the timeless must reflect its times.”

Mulier’s next stop, of course, is Versace, where he will take over from the ousted-too-soon Dario Vitale. His ability to balance house history and contemporary needs bodes well for his upcoming Versace tenure. Like Alaïa, Versace is a house steeped in a very specific design language and aesthetic sensibility. One imagines (or hopes, at least) that Mulier will choose to embrace the  house for what it is, like he did at Alaia, rather than bending it to fit his own agenda like so many newly appointed creative directors have done in the past two decades.

And whatever happens at Versace, Mulier has certainly left Alaïa on good footing. Gorgeous as this final collection is, it’s also a sort of pallet cleanser. A clean slate on which Alaïa’s next designer can build their own vision of the brand without having to fight what came before. And a gentle farewell from Mulier to the brand that has given him so much and he it in return.

“I am proud that I am a part of the history of this house,” he wrote at the end of the show notes, “and this house will be a part of me, forever.”

Check out the rest of the collection below.