Alaïa Winter – Spring 2025 during New York Fashion Week

Alaïa Winter – Spring 2025 during New York Fashion Week, Showing this 2025 Winter – Spring Alaïa collection in New York came about for two reasons: opportunity, and obsession. The opportunity to stage a show in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and an obsession with the idea of American beauty.

American beauty means freedom, of body and of spirit. A simplicity, a modernity and directness, a purity. And both for Alaïa and myself, America is a home away from home. I lived and worked in New York for three years. It helped shape who I am today. And, in the 1980s, for Azzedine Alaïa, it was a city where his clothes and philosophy of design were embraced, where he opened his first store. In 1982, he showed in New York for the first time; in 2000, Alaïa pieces were placed in conversation with works by Andy Warhol at the Guggenheim Museum’s temporary space in SoHo – an exchange of art and fashion that was unprecedented.

This season, AlaAlaïa Winter – Spring 2025, we were offered the chance to show in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum during New York Fashion Week – an act of generosity, a creative exchange with kindred spirits. It is the first time a fashion collection has been shown in the museum’s rotunda.

The collection itself has been shaped, inherently, by that idea – by showing in an art museum, in America. There is a sense of American sportswear, its ease and practicality. There are traces of the work of American fashion greats – Adrian, Halston, Charles James, Claire McCardell. American beauty, again. There is also a sculptural aspect, born from Azzedine’s obsessions, and my own.

Details of Alaïa Winter – Spring 2025, Geometric shapes animated around the form: circles, squares, spirals of fabric wrapping the body, in double-face cashmere, fine knit, sculpted poplin and silk taffeta. No zippers, no buttons – stripping away to a dynamic simplicity. Some pieces are suspended, held in position by imperceptible internal structures, like magic tricks. The clothes are couture studies, of an American vernacular of dress – denims, t-shirts, sports pieces. And alongside our studies, we have invited students from three American fashion schools – Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Parsons, Pratt – to attend the show, and see our work.

Alaïa Winter – Spring 2025 collection is about honoring tradition alongside modernity. It is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris – of the body in motion, liberated. As Alaïa always has been.

Much love, Pieter