It’s interesting how centuries move in parallel. Albert Kriemler chose Vienna circa 1900–1918 as a starting point this season, in part because he sees those years as a time of women’s advancement, not unlike our own. The Akris designer isn’t one to wear his politics on his sleeve; he’s more comfortable in the world of art, which is why Egon Schiele portraits lined the back of the runway and the clothes were informed by the works of Gustav Klimt.
Discussing the period, Kriemler described it as the “birth of modernism,” pointing out that it wasn’t minimal. “There was still the richness of art nouveau, and the romanticism of before . . . . ” It gave him a lot to work with, but being rather more of a minimalist himself, Kriemler handled it subtly. Klimt’s famous gold leaf, for example, appeared as just a dusting on a St. Gallen lace tunic and pants set, and as barely a shimmer on the inside of a kangaroo leather coat, although it’s worth noting that the coat was actually reversible. Functionality was apparently another of the era’s hallmarks, which suits very well Kriemler’s 21st-century repertoire of streamlined suiting and unfussy shirt-dressing.
This was a well-judged collection from Kriemler: lively with color and pattern, including a bold black-and-white stripe impressively constructed from horizontal strips of felted wool sewn together in shoulder-to-hem vertical stitches. Yet it was restrained in a way that felt true to this sober label, with silhouettes that looked not werkstätten, but of today. The exception was the St. Gallen lace cardigan, which Kriemler said he modeled after styles worn by Viennese ladies of the 1910s, among them salonnières like Berta Zuckerkandl and Alma Mahler Werfel, who have been more or less lost to history while the men they hosted—Klimt et al.—enjoy enduring fame. Kriemler gets extra points for bringing them to light in the small way he did today.
