It’s been 10 years since Albert Kriemler launched Akris’s handbag collection with the Ai bag. To mark the occasion, he tented a room in the Grand Palais in the Ai’s trapezoidal shape and had a giant Ai created for the back of the runway, from which the models emerged. Naturally, they carried bags, most of them a softly constructed trompe l’oeil update called the Aicon. Kriemler continued the trapezoidal motif with his clothing. Backstage he said, “It’s good for the physiognomy,” and he was right. Inserted into the backs of dresses, the geometric shapes created a graceful fluidity.
Italian painter Antonio Calderara was Kriemler’s reference point for Spring. He chooses a new artist each season, but this one is a particularly apt match. In his late career, Calderara was as obsessed with geometry as Kriemler is today—apparently he was a figurative painter until he saw a Mondrian in the 1950s, after which he never looked back. Calderara’s signature rectangles appeared on a voile shirtdress and caftans as ethereal as his discreet pastel palette. Of the artist’s colors, Kriemler said, “They scintillate.” That led him to his own silvery palette, which included a silver foil stripe that he developed in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and a metallic Lurex jersey with a liquid cling. Rounding out the story were the micro Ai belt bags in chrome leather.
