When Akris creative director Albert Kriemler talks about his grandmother, Alice Kriemler-Schoch, the family matriarch who in 1922 founded the Swiss fashion house that he now leads, he refers to her as a “woman of purpose.” And that, he said in an interview at his Paris studio this week, “is who I design for—women of purpose.”
How does that translate into the clothes themselves? “First of all, they have to be comfortable,” he explained. “It’s a very basic phrase, I know. But I think when a woman is at ease in her clothes, she can really be her own person. I think a woman of purpose doesn’t want to have complicated clothes.”
And certainly the first few offerings that came out on the runway on Monday afternoon at the fall 2020 show, held at Paris’s Museum of Modern Art, did not look complicated. Sumptuous cashmere pullovers, either paired with a cashmere patch-pocket cape or a wool double-face, single-breasted coat, swaddled and caressed the wearer. They were an elegant, high-fashion version of comfort food.
But Kriemler had more than comfort on his mind with the collection, starting with the setting; the designer said it was the first time he had ever shown in a museum. Though Kriemler has often referenced the works of artists in his collection—most recently the Italian painter Antonio Caldera for spring 2020—this time he said his starting point was the 1924 silent film L’Inhumaine, particularly the Cubist sets designed by the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.
Mallet-Stevens was known for his collaborations with other artists, working relationships that grew into the Union des Artistes Modernes and helped establish Paris as a center of avant-garde art and design. (Works by two members of that collective, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, hang in the Museum of Modern Art, and provided the striking backdrop of Monday’s show.) Kriemler said those collaborations reminded him of his own work with his artisan colleagues, particularly his printers and the skilled embroidery workers from the Swiss city of St. Gallen, and he wanted to celebrate those collaborations with this collection.
That work was showcased in such striking looks as a long taffeta parka with a trapezoid closure; a taupe, millefleurs-lace, hand-pleated shirt gown; a Cubist-inspired stand-collar tunic; a plum double-face wool cutout dress with slits; a stretchy, black silk crepe strapless gown with a techno grid-structured cube skirt; and in particular, the show’s final look, a multicolored silk and velvet double-breasted jacket paired with a wide-leg pant with cuff.
Just what a woman of purpose might well be adding to her wardrobe in the fall.
