Alaïa Summer Fall 2025: Draped in Art

In 2015, Rome’s Borghese Gallery staged the exhibition “Couture/Sculpture,” in which Azzedine Alaïa’s creations were exhibited alongside sculptures from ancient Rome and Greece. The clothing drew attention to the form of these masterpieces, and vice versa: the curves, the posture, that which is revealed and that which stays hidden. 

A similar dialogue between clothing, art and body took place last night at Alaïa’s atelier in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, where the maison presented its Summer Fall 2025 collection. Stationed around the space were sculptures by Mark Manders. The one near me depicted a man’s face and torso, though he was missing his arms and half his head, as if damaged by the ravages of time — or, perhaps, still under construction.

As the show began, other sculptures came to life: “flexible sculptures,” to borrow a term Alaïa himself used on the occasion of the 2015 exhibition, describing his own work. I say sculptures rather than clothing because the collection beamed with artistry, enhanced by the models who animated them. They walked slowly and gracefully, often with their hands resting at their center as if posing for a painting.

In several of the first looks, models’ faces were shaped by donut-shaped rings connected to transparent tops, styled with pleated skirts that protruded dramatically from the hips. Such attention to and exaggeration of the human form recurred through the collection: in oversized, cocooning coats with thick tubular edges; or in delicate dresses, contorted by what seemed like wireframing, revealed bare sections of the models’ midriffs.

“This Alaïa collection began with thoughts of history, of geography, of sculpture, and always of women. They are all part of the clothes, within them,” Pieter Mulier, Alaïa’s creative director, said in press notes. In his abundant creativity, Mulier recognizes that clothing requires a wearer in order to be complete. Otherwise, a garment is like an unfinished work of art.