Taste is so arbitrary. Looking at this Ami collection so soon after Balmain (via an Hermès interlude) was very interesting. At Balmain, there was an almost obscene level of expert handiwork on display—in both the embellishment-plumped Pre-Fall looks and gold spangled men’s cavalry fantasies. At Ami, with the exception of some blue-strafed silver sequined pieces near the crescendo, there was not a whiff of that virtuoso ostentation. Watching this show after Balmain was like seeing an ice-skater going from A to B immediately after another locked in an endless cycle of dizzying, perfect pirouettes.
And yet, how great this was: just full of fantastic clothes to wear whose proportions were completely in tune with the progressive minutiae of our moment. That’s totally subjective, but what can you do? As per usual, there were women and men in near-identical looks, differently sized. Both genders were totally convincing citizens of next winter. Often there were monotone combinations: camel peak topcoat against camel wool pant, gray topcoat against gray pant—oh my, that break!—with occasional variations of check and leg stripe. Really, Ami doesn’t need to hold a show: It’s a 5-year-old brand that makes perfectly observed prosaic. You could swoon over it on a rail, too.
Berluti had the hottest shearlings of the season—it would—but these ran it a close second. At the end, the models clustered at one side of the darkened runway in a patch of yellow light that slowly intensified. Alexandre Mattiussi said he’d wanted to portray an all-nighter in Paris. In truth, barring those sequins, perhaps these clothes were a little plain for that. This critic wanted it all—but you might want all of Balmain. What’s the difference? Accident—and design.
