Halfway through a preview before Ami’s fall show, designer Alexandre Mattiussi’s mother arrived backstage. “Salut cherie,” she embraced her son, dressed in head-to-toe black Ami tailoring and toting the hit Déja-Vu bag, a dead ringer for Isabelle Huppert and very chic with it. The appearance of Mattiussi’s mom chimed with the family atmosphere backstage. If anyone felt anxious at the thought of a fashion show being held amidst another cruel pandemic wave, concern was somewhat dispelled by the stringent safety precautions (COVID pass checks, KN95 masks, a slim audience of guests seated over a meter apart in a high-ceilinged venue) and the markedly exuberant vibe. “We have done two digital shows and now we’re back. It’s a kind of resistance,” said Mattiussi. “We wanted to stay brave—because it feels like [in Paris] we can still go to the restaurants, we can still go to the cinemas and theaters, why would you want to cancel a show?”
He chose as his venue Palais Brongniart, the old stock exchange building at Place de la Bourse, which sits above a transport hub. Mattiussi had the Métro on his mind. “It’s the only place today in a city where everybody is on top of each other. There’s an old lady, a guy coming out from a party, a guy who is on the way to work, kids, grandmothers, different vibes, different cultures. This is the only place where you don’t have the choice of who you will be seated with,” he observed. “It’s a democratic thing. And Ami is about dressing everyone.”
Granted, you’d be hard-pressed to find Isabelle Adjani enjoying the dusky aromas of Line 10. Nor can one imagine Emily Ratajkowski changing platforms at Châtelet Les Halles. But that didn’t stop them from filing down the catwalk in clothes that drew heavily on the French wardrobe tropes anyone with a passing interest in fashion can reel off without blinking: trench coats, shearling aviator jackets, slip dresses, black blazers, and tweedy skirt suits, with some fluid tailoring in hot pink and tangerine thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile, the big casting shots continued to ring out: Sage Elsesser (brother of Paloma) and Ben Attal (son of Charlotte Gainsbourg) injected some offbeat cool to boxy outerwear, while 43-year-old Laetitia Casta and 41-year-old Mariacarla Boscono closed the show. The real Isabelle Huppert sat front row, chatting to Catherine Deneuve.
In December, Ami opened its first store in New York; in 2022 more openings are planned in Miami, Los Angeles, Seoul, Hamburg, Milan, London.… “Stores are so important, it’s like inviting people to your table for dinner,” said Mattiussi. The business, according to CEO Nicolas Santi-Weil, has multiplied by four in the last two years. Asked to sum up why Ami’s sales have been so strong in a period when other brands have struggled, Mattiussi didn’t skip a beat. “Because we’re sincere. Because we’re honest. And we deliver a good product at a good price for a good reason. Everything is made with love.”
