ALAÏA WINTER SPRING 2026

“Alaïa is a house of simplicity and purity – intimacy, and a radical beauty.

Today, continuum is radical – this collection is an evolution of last season, which in turn builds on the one previous. In an echo of Azzedine Alaïa’s methodology, of the intemporelle, each collection adds to a body of work, to our ideology of Alaïa.

This collection is reduced, sculptural. Precise. Yet there is also an extremity to it, in heightened colours, bold shapes. Uncompromising.

Everything is cotton, python, leather, silk. Extremes of luxury and simplicity, with nothing between.

There is a feel of uniform – the uniform of Azzedine himself inspired, its function and pragmatism. Clothes as machines for living, workwear reworked.

There’s an invention through craft. Can you knit pearls? Imaginary feathers and pearls executed in macramé move and flow around the form.

I’m fascinated by the idea of tension, which feels relevant for today. A tension between genders, between excess and restraint, covering and revealing, between our history and our future, cultural forces. There is a tension in the performance of the show, the figure of each model caught between a filmed and mirror image of herself.

And there is a literal tension, a torsion, in the clothes. They are drawn around the body, suspended from unexpected points to redefine a silhouette, streamlined and ergonomic. The sculpture is pulled against the skin – there is a sense, always, of the woman’s body within, moving, alive.

Then, other pieces are open, free, sliced open to reveal the body, or fragments of dresses laid against the skin. Movement seems to fracture pieces – choreographies of fringe create silhouettes that shatter and regroup.

Clothes that cry”

Pieter Mulier