Alexis Mabille has a booming sideline in interior decor—to wit, his festive, maximalist reboot of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, or the Saint Tropez edition of Cipriani (soon to be followed by LA). He juggles constantly, and says it’s a godsend that he doesn’t need a lot of sleep.
For his Spring outing, Mabille wanted to take his short capsule of 16 evening looks straight to the dance floor, hence the collection’s title “Dance Machine.” It was filmed at the Paris boîte Le Silencio.
“I really wanted to portray life and movement,” the designer offered during a showroom tour of a lineup that alternated between willowy flou and structured dresses in crepe or radzimir.
A long shirt dress in white radzimir, for example, with inserts of Lyon lace was a deliberate mash-up between high fashion and the ease of a T-shirt. Mabille calls the mindset “coolitude,” and he whipped up a few crystal-studded satin baseball caps to underscore that point.
In terms of color, the designer kept it mostly neutral, in shades of sand, ivory, chestnut, and black, with the occasional shot of saturated hues, for example in a long, emerald wrap dress with crystal buttons that channeled the French “smoking” or a forest green cape-dress.
Each look is like a playground, the designer said: “The whole concept of the capsule is to address plurality and multiple styles of wear.” He also made a point of sticking to pieces that can easily be adapted to individual tastes and lifestyles—short in California, long in England, for example. A dress in platinum crêpe with slit shoulders was cut along an 'X' line to be universally flattering, he added.
Mabille is a keen observer of nightlife. With a new generation coming of age, dressing for evening is taking a new twist, he notes, so he tries to keep his proposition as flexible as possible. It will be interesting to see how his young clientele bends this lineup to their reality. It is also entirely possible that Mabille—a man of broad culture and a talented colorist—will eventually have to choose between two worlds.
