Haute Couturier Alexis Mabille on 20 Years of Design: “I Was Too Avant-Garde”
Words by Jude Jones, Photographs via Alexis Mabille
This Paris Fashion Week, veteran designer Alexis Mabille celebrated twenty years of his namesake brand. Over those two decades, much has changed: Alexis Mabille has shifted from prêt-à-porter to prestigious haute couture, discarded its unisex ideals (he was doing unisex before it was cool) for an almost superfluous femininity. Although, perhaps “changed” is the wrong word. No, Mabille, over this period almost as long as this author’s lifetime, has been slowly perfecting and experimenting, reimagining and thinking. This is all part of the designer’s natural evolution, whose taste for the expansive, the extravagant, the almost-tyrannical has led him not only to haute couture but to interior design as well, where he subjects sweeping spaces and chambers to his aesthete’s eye, transubstantiates the bland into the palatial for the sake of pure beauty. This isn’t change; it is artistic maturation.
Because there are radiant throughlines between Mabille’s then and now, too. His anniversary collection, “We Are Amazing”, featured a fetish for the timeless and an erudite reverence for the house’s visual coda that Mabille painstakingly established himself: a cornucopia-like abundance of bowties, which Mabille has always preferred as his trademark for its genderless potentiality; a sequence of looks designed with specific friends of the house in mind, from American burlesque legend Dita von Teese to iconic French ballerina Marie-Agnès Gillot. To craft a dress – a couture one no less – with a single person as the intended wearer, being able to encapsulate an entire human in swathes of fabric and embroidered jewels, takes both a humanistic eye and an almost super-human attention to detail. The latter of which, at least, Mabille must have picked up from some of his mentors, having worked under John Galliano at Dior and Hedi Slimane. The humanism, though, is likely his own.
There lies much of the beauty of Mabille. Talking through my own nervousness at interviewing a haute-couture designer before the task, I was reassured by those who have come across him before, “Alexis is one of the nicest people I’ve ever talked to!”. In an industry that seems to breed monsters as much as it does copycats, Mabille manages to avoid becoming either while putting not himself but the people he cares about – von Teese, Gillot, and the various others featured in “We Are Amazing” – at the forefront of a collection meant to celebrate his anniversary. Although a celebration it certainly was, an audacious overflowing of organza and opulence – dresses that bent and swerved with an impossible, retro-futurist geometry; tulle and flowy feather forms that appeared more liquid than solid – that only somebody as singular, as selfless, and as devoted as Mabille could dream to create.
Jude Jones (JJ): There’s a bit of a pun in your name, a fashion designer called Alexis Mabille (“Alexis m’habille”, or “Alexis dresses me” in English). Do you ever think there was a bit of nominative determinism in you turning out the way you did?
Alexis Mabille (AM): Ahaha yes! In French it is very fun and there’s certainly a predestination. I’ve been sewing since the age of 6 and textiles, colors and sewing have always fascinated me. So, my name sticks to me.
JJ: You used this pun yourself in your SS12 menswear line. Do you ever miss making menswear? What different challenges does menswear pose to womenswear pose to haute couture?
AM: Yes, I have used it in the past; it was fun to explain to international clients the
meaning of it. I loved doing menswear in the past, but I was too avant-garde for the market with my unisex collections at this time. I always challenge myself for everything, so for both disciplines [menswear and womenswear, ready-to-wear and haute couture] it is the same for me. The approach was almost the same for me, the only real difference was the body construction, which interacts with the cut. But my first collections were totally unisex, with a crossing fit of pants and shirts and bow ties.
JJ: What is the process of coming up with a design or inspiration like for you? I always find that your creations seem very expansive and intentional, keeping in mind your forays into interior design and things you’ve cited as inspirations in the past, like the imagined scents of your models or the greyness of the Paris sky.
AM: The process of inspiration is very wide, as I am like a sponge feeling the city’s mood and people’s attitude and it [all] gives me the [desire] to reinterpret or reinvent our lifestyle. That is why between fashion, interior design and collectible design there is a feeling and sensible approach [to what I do]. I create with sentiments and instincts. I don’t care about trends, I go my direction which [appeals to] my own clientele, [who are] very international and yes very luxury oriented.
JJ: For your latest collection “We Are Amazing” you also chose the people wearing each design as a source of inspiration. Do you think a wearer should always have a special connection to their clothes?
AM: Yes, it was important for me to show how we work with clients in Couture, from different styles and origins who have strong personalities but love my work. They all have their vision of my work keeps [the collection’s] unicity. And yes, clients have a relationship with their clothes. With strong, wearable looks they show who they really are. Human beings inspire me as we are so different from all over the planet. That is why I asked to my tribe to be modeling for me this season.
JJ: This was an anniversary collection for you, marking twenty years since you launched your namesake label (congrats!). What has changed about your design philosophy in those two decades?
AM: I spoke about an anniversary year of the label I created in 2005 with my unisex pants collection. [I] then move[d] naturally to a full collection to Haute Couture. I never really think about [my] changes as the system changed so much from that time to today. My philosophy didn’t really change. I am just more mature and better know my markets and clients, who love to be surprised.
JJ: How has the fashion industry changed, in your opinion, over those two decades?
AM: It changed a lot in the way to work, to present collections, to communicate in direct and being so close [to] your own public without the needs of the past organisation. I mean Instagram, Facebook, X: all those supports [have] made such an opening in the world…
JJ: If you could go back in time and give the 2005 version of yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
AM: I loved my beginnings, with [so many] dreams which come true during those 20 years of hard work. The advice would be to keep your lightness and crazy ideas as it is the recipe to make it happen. [Then], in step 2, [do] huge work [and make] beautiful products.