LAST DANCE: Before Pieter Mulier‘s swan song as creative director of Alaïa comes his final campaign for the Paris-based house.
Released Tuesday, it features five up-and-coming models lensed by Steven Meisel and continues “a tradition of collaboration with photography’s most pre-eminent talents, initiated by Azzedine Alaïa and carried forward today by Pieter Mulier,” the house said in a statement shared first with WWD.
The late Tunisian couturier famously worked with the likes of Peter Lindbergh and Arthur Elgort.
Describing Meisel as “among the most influential image-makers in the history of fashion,” Alaïa said the American photographer echoes the reduced, sculptural quality of Mulier’s winter-spring collection.
“Its simplicity and frontal quality introduce an intentional radicality. No noise, just beauty,” according to the house. “The purity of the setting, the absence of ornament, and the deliberate repetition of a single composition place the body and the garments at the centre of the image.”
The campaign will be visible from Tuesday at Milan newsstands, and will also appear on billboards and kiosks throughout Paris Fashion Week.
There is also a campaign film with the same soundtrack as the show, by Gustave Rudman.
Mulier is to wrap an eventful and acclaimed five-year tenure at the Alaïa after his summer-fall show and join Versace in Milan on July 1, as reported.
The affable Belgian designer started his fashion career working at the Raf Simons men’s label in Antwerp, later working under Simons at Jil Sander, Calvin Klein and Dior.
Steven Meisel / Courtesy of ALAÏA
