How This Museum's Architecture Inspired Fashion
Plus: Anna Wintour goes on the Staten Island Ferry
Pieter Mulier, the creative director of French fashion house Alaïa, sent his models spiraling down the runway.
This was not a moment of chaos or some runway show invoking apocalyptic mayhem; it’s because the New York Fashion Week runway show took place in the Guggenheim Museum on 5th Avenue.
The spiral museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, not only served as the venue for the show, but it was also its inspiration.
The show, by many accounts, was a success. Sitting in the audience was Rihanna looking regal, as well as legendary fashion models Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Stephanie Seymour.
Vanessa Friedman, New York Times’ chief fashion critic praised Mulier, saying “After three years of negotiating, not always easily, with the heritage of the house Azzedine built, he finally made it his own.”
Friedman also said the collection was a “a collage of spirals and geometry” with examples like “Chubby coats [that] were composed of swirls of woolly wadding to reflect the swirls of the museum.”
Designers often choose their venue to set the stage for the mood they want the show to invoke. Simon Porte Jacquemus has staged his Jacquemus fashion shows in the middle of lavender fields and on the beaches of Hawaii. Balenciaga’s Spring Summer 2023 show was set in a mud pit to really drive home the other worldly / dystopian feel of the looks.
But it’s not always the case that the architecture informs the fashion AND serves as the backdrop to show it off.
So how did this come to be?
There seem to be conflicting accounts on how this all came together. According to a few different outlets, It was actually the Guggenheim Museum that reached out to Pieter Mulier and the folks at Alaia. They were inspired by this Alaïa dress worn by Zendaya last year, and thought they should start a conversation with Mulier.
According to AnOther Magazine, it was Mulier who saw the museum’s helical ramp in the dresses’ designs and reached out to the museum.
No matter who reached out first, Alaïa became the first fashion house to put on a show at the Guggenheim. And the shapes, colors, and textures of the designs were all intensified by the stage the were strutted on.
One look in particular got a lot of attention… this dress that Friedman called an “eye-popping feat of fashion architecture.”
“strapless sci-fi Greek goddess gowns made from hundreds of tiny pleats of silk jersey were engineered to snap onto the body with no visible straps, zips or closures, and made to expose a river of skin curving continuously from breastbone to ribs and waist, and then on down the leg to the ankle.”
Perhaps even more impressive was seeing the structure of a dress when it isn’t being worn:
The architectural references went deeper than just the shape of the looks at this Alaïa show.
Mulier’s puffer coats referenced the dinner jackets French-born designer Charles James constructed in the 1930s.
James worked in an architectural design firm before becoming famous for fashion and he thought of himself as a “sartorial structural architect.”
His designs were highly sculptural and used intricate shaping to create silhouettes not typically seen before. Azzedine Alaïa too was a sculptor; and Mulier brought it full circle with this show.
As he said in 2022: “For me, it’s about sculpture, and Alaïa is a sculptor. The biggest sculptor in fashion.”
It only makes sense that this success of a show was debuted at the most sculptural of museum design.
Tommy Hilfiger was nautically inspired for his latest collection - so he chose to do his show on a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry.
The MV John F. Kennedy was retired in 2021 and put up for auction the following year. SNL comedians and Staten Island Natives Colin Jost and Pete Davidson decided to buy the vessel (this was the exact one that Jost said he rode to and from school everyday) and turn it into an event space.
So this weekend, celebrities and fashion icons showed up on the boat to celebrate looks that were inspired by nautical prep.
Fascinating. I love architectural designs - buildings - often loving a museum (African American & American Indian in DC are two) as much for the architecture as the collections and purpose. The American Indian is one with beautiful curves inside and out.
Fashion fascinates me - what and who and why!
Thank you for this.