WINTER SPRING 25

Presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Alaïa Winter Spring 2025 collection marks a unique creative exchange and a historical moment for the Maison.

This choice to show the collection in New York reflects the strong connection between Alaïa and the city. New York indeed played a significant role in shaping both the brand’s story and this collection. For Pieter Mulier, this choice also came about for two other reasons: opportunity, and obsession. The opportunity to stage a show in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and his obsession with the idea of American beauty which, to him, means a simplicity, a modernity and directness, a purity.

Alaïa’s relationship with New York spans 40 years. It was a home away from home for Azzedine Alaïa, a city where his designs were embraced and where he opened his first store in the 1980s. His work was first shown in the city in 1982, and in 2000, his clothes were placed in conversation with works by Andy Warhol—an unprecedented exchange of art and fashion. It is also a city where Pieter Mulier lived and worked for three years. “It helped shape who I am today,” he says.

Today, Alaïa continues to celebrate this bond by presenting the Winter Spring 2025 collection at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—the first time a fashion collection is shown in the iconic museum’s rotunda. The collection itself has been shaped by this idea of showing in an art museum in America. It evokes a sense of American sportswear, with its ease and practicality. A purity, an idea of freedom, of body and of spirit.

Geometric shapes animate around the form: circles, squares, spirals of fabric wrapping the body, in double-face cashmere, fine knit, sculpted poplin, and silk taffeta. No zippers, no buttons—stripping away to a dynamic simplicity. Some pieces seem suspended, held in position by imperceptible internal structures, like magic tricks.

The clothes are couture studies of an American vernacular of dress—denims, t-shirts, sports pieces. Alongside the Maison’s studies, Alaïa has invited students from three American fashion schools to attend the show.

“This collection is about honoring tradition alongside modernity. It is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that, of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris—the body in motion, liberated. As Alaïa always has been.” — Pieter Mulier