Altuzarra (Q1519)
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American fashion company
- Altuzarra, LLC
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Altuzarra |
American fashion company |
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Statements
2009
Chief Designer
The arrival of a new baby, his third with his husband, kept Joseph Altuzarra off the New York Fashion Week calendar in September. Behind the scenes, though, everything moved according to schedule; the clothes in these photos were sold to buyers starting in May, and parts of the collection will arrive in stores next month. It was designed in the same spirit as his fall runway show, which marked a creative turning point, with its rejection of “total look” fashion and emphasis on individual style. At a showroom appointment he said a pine green cropped suede jacket and long cotton chino skirt, which together exemplify his new more irreverent and more pragmatic approach, were among the season’s best sellers with his wholesalers.“The overarching thing we worked around this season was literature,” he explained. Altuzarra reads a lot of fiction and keeps up a staff book club;Remarkably Bright Creaturesby Shelby Van Pelt andThe Great Aloneby Kristin Hannah are two recent reads. On the clothes, his love of books translated into papery textures, folding details, and prints, like the marbling motif that decorated a shirtdress, and body paintings à la Yves Klein that appeared on otherwise minimal sheaths. Other pieces were printed with fantastical images of creatures skimming over waves and mountaintops, the result of a cadavre exquis project the design studio took part in. And the exaggerated cotton eyelet that adorned the ruffled neckline of a slinky silk dress was inspired by paper crafts of the kind most of us will remember from making snowflakes in art class.Swapping a sense of control for a sense of play can make for tricksy fashion, but Altuzarra kept his designs rooted in recognizable archetypes. The papery yarns, for instance, were used for aran sweaters, while floaty organza skirts with origami-like folding details were grounded by neat tailored jackets with the defined waists of the New Look. “We still wanted it to feel like it was a lot of different people,” Altuzarra said. He let his imagination fly on an evening dress with an “almost Renaissance hip construction” and eyelet ruffles at the shoulder line that evoke bird’s wings. A look—and a collection—with a lot of main character energy.
25 October 2024
Joseph Altuzarra emailed personal invitations to his show. In a normal season that would’ve required clicking send on 600 or so individual notes. But this was his 15th anniversary, and as he said in his invite, he wanted to honor it with “those who have supported me throughout my career.” He brought together a group of about 100 at his Woolworth Building HQ for a salon-style presentation. His daughter sat on his mother’s lap, and there wasn’t a pay-for-play celebrity or influencer in the room.“I worked on this collection in a different way,” Altuzarra said at a studio preview before the space was emptied to prepare for the show. “It wasn’t as much about stories and much more about pieces that I felt interested in developing.” After a season that was called out for some secondhand ideas, Altuzarra was due for a reset, and this collection did indeed feel renewed, with fresh ideas pulled from his own personal preoccupations.Take Look 1, a sweeping mac with a storm-flap back lifted directly from his own life. Altuzarra has started show jumping competitively out on Long Island, where he and his husband have a home; later on in the collection, a pair of silk-twill sundresses featured abstract prints that looked equestrian in nature. Jodhpurs were in the mix too.Amidst the pictures of horse girls on the mood board were Tamara de Lempicka paintings that may have inspired a crystal-and-lace flapper-ish slip dress. Illustrations of clowns in Pierrot ruffs definitely influenced the frilled collars and cuffs on knits and blouses, which were often topped by more masculine pieces, like a peacoat or a toggle coat, or a neatly tailored blazer—shades of ’80s Ralph Lauren.With the exception of the knit pants that made multiple appearances—full to just below the knees, then leggings tight to the ankles, and worn with pointy ballet flats—variety was the rule here. “I wanted it to feel like walking into someone’s wardrobe that they’ve collected over a long period of time, where things feel like they say something about the person’s personality,” said Altuzarra.You could see the room full of editors making mental shopping lists: a sequined Aran sweater for this one, a bugle-beaded tuxedo shirt with tails for that one, an embroidered harlequin lace blouse for another—special pieces grounded in the everyday.
11 February 2024
"I didn't want the collection to be cold or distant," said Joseph Altuzarra of his 15-plus-piece debut presentation. No chance of that. His are the kind of of-the-moment, body-conscious clothes made for raising, ahem, emotions in hot-blooded males. With the forties and eighties as reference points, Altuzarra turned out ruched dresses in white stretch matte jersey with slightly padded shoulders; camel-colored pantsuits with fitted jackets and razor-slim pants; and one-shoulder silver-blue silk lamé and stretch georgette cocktail dresses worn with above-the-knee black suede boots. But the Givenchy and Proenza Schouler alum isn't a one-note boy wonder. Lose the superfluous fur fringe on the sharp cashmere-wool cream coat that opened the show or the jacket that followed, and the collection would be less about landing a man than landing that big job. It can't be easy launching a business at a time like this, but Altuzarra's polished technique means he's an up-and-comer to take seriously.
11 February 2024
“It’s a departure,” Joseph Altuzarra announced before his show. “I thought of the last couple of years as being an exploration of a kind of escapist world, one that crescendoed last season with all these swirling colors, and I liked the idea of going back to something that felt a little more vulnerable, a little rawer, and a little closer to life.”Rosemary’s Babywas a reference point. He had a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of the Ira Levin book placed on every guest seat, but it was the Roman Polanski movie that he quoted. Nine years ago, for spring 2015, Altuzarra was looking at the same film, but its haunting undercurrents felt much closer to the surface this season, what with tulle veils and matching 1960s babydoll dresses and the she’s-come-undone details, like the crushed textures of everything from slipdresses to A-line coats, gauzy organza slips peeking out from underneath the hems of pencil skirts, and the DIY-ish embroideries on other skirts and dresses.Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse was the stated muse, but Miuccia Prada presided over the proceedings. Prada practically invented the unhinged bourgeois, on the runway at least, and this collection nodded at both her recent outing and more archival ones. It’s been a week of ’90s references, with other designers looking at Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein. They are, at root, competing visions: cool minimalism on the one hand, and twisted conservatism on the other. But if either can persuade women to move on from the played-out provocations of edgy and sexual, it will be a victory.To tempt them, Altuzarra had satin coats in red, butter yellow, and ivory that were A-line and somewhat oversized, “almost as if you took a doll coat from the ’60s and blew it up a little bit,” and a strapless polka dot trapeze dress straight out of 1950s couture. There was also a pair of gowns, one black with thin straps, and the other a white tank style, that looked neither twisted, nor bourgeois; they were simply striking.
11 September 2023
Collectively much of New York has decided on modern tailoring and soft neutrals for fall 2023. Brown pantsuits are everywhere—do we need so many of them? Group think on this level suggests that designers are proceeding with caution, reining themselves in because of outer forces like inflation, or inner ones like exhaustion. That’s what made Joseph Altuzarra’s show last night so outstanding, he’s on his own trip.Alive with color, print, and texture, every look was long to the floor, and there wasn’t a pantsuit in sight. It read like a culmination of the three seasons that preceded it, in which he leaned into nature, mythology, and even shamanism. “I wanted it to feel like an exploration of imagination and feeling,” Altuzarra said at a preview. “There’s a sense of everything being so fraught right now, everything you read is so based in scary real things. I wanted to counterbalance that with something that felt out of this world.”The show’s first looks delivered on that promise. The dyed parkas, both short and long, looked like they could’ve been based on butterfly wings or floral patterns. Actually, they were Rorschachs, inspired by the idea of seers and oracles—of reading the tea leaves. More vibrantly printed outerwear followed, only in brushed wool. A peacoat and long narrow skirt cut from the same fabric worn with elbow length gloves was a novel idea for a fancy evening: dramatic, while still relaxed.The New York Public Library venue was kept purposely dim, lit as if by candles, as if to make the point that this was a collection full of entrance makers. A draped jersey section yielded several easy-to-wear jersey knockouts in the vein of Madame Grès. An ethereal white two-piece look paired a softly draped top sliced diagonally at the hem with a sinuous bias-cut long skirt, exposing just a flash of skin at the midriff. Another group of dresses featured botanical prints placed with care (and a great deal of labor, Altuzarra said) over specific parts of the body: the ribs, the spine, the hip bones, the femurs, “as if nature is reclaiming it.”Altuzarra acknowledged a timely synergy with end-of-the-world TV sensationThe Last of Us. The stuff that he’s been thinking about—mysticism, the rituals we turn to to make sense of the world—resonates for a lot of us. Then there’s just the simple magic of an extraordinary piece.
Those came at the end: another group of evening parkas, these in satin embellished with crystals in those botanical patterns, for opening night at the opera or another out-of-this-world occasion. Bravo.
15 February 2023
Joseph Altuzarra is on a roll. His gender-ful collection, Altu, is off and running; he’s got a new TikTok account that fashion people can’t stop talking about; and his eponymous collection just keeps getting better, with three shows, including this one, building on one another and telling a larger story. “The world feels so alien and scary. I’ve been interested in how people in the past have made sense of things,” Altuzarra said at a preview. “Finding tangible reasons for why things are happening is what people would do, and that’s what I’ve been expressing through the collections.”For spring he said he wanted to explore “this idea of a trip and nature as an entry point for psychedelic experiences.” A couple of books,The Teachings of Don JuanandDesert Solitaire,both written in the late ’60s and both delving into mysticism, proved inspirational. The show played out like a journey—or maybe a vision quest—starting with preppy-ish classics like striped shirts, cable sweaters, and minis that Altuzarra tweaked and twisted until they looked neither preppy nor classic. He topped them with boxy blazers or parkas (his earliest fans will have clocked the callback to a breakthrough collection for fall 2011), and accessorized the looks with retro Keds sneakers. Altuzarra experimented with denim, too, a first for him.The shibori-dyed dress of look 19 is where woman meets nature. Tie-dye and coin embroidery are two Altuzarra signatures, and he doubled down here, sending out a parade of exquisite dresses whose intricate craftsmanship is near unrivaled in New York. Most ambitious—and impressive—was the series of body-skimming numbers that were first tie-dyed, then pleated and twisted; their patterns looked like exotic skins. Other dresses were sewn first, then dyed. “It’s all done on a final garment. You basically can’t mess up, because if you do, you have to redo the whole thing,” he said. They take almost two months to make.In the end, Altuzarra’s hot streak comes down to that kind of hard work. It’s the path to enlightenment too. According to the Tao: When you concentrate fully on a task, you leave the self behind and you find inner peace. There was evidence of that work all over this collection, not least of all in the finale parkas, which he dyed and embellished with oversized paillettes and mandalas of smaller metal discs, bells, and beads. Everyday and enlightened—magical realism in sartorial form.
10 September 2022
Joseph Altuzarra had a productive pandemic. In November he introduced a small collection of home goods that quickly sold out. Then in December he launched Altu, a new line of genderful—not genderless—clothes that’s won over Troye Sivan and Justin Bieber. “I’m much less risk averse now,” Altuzarra said at a showroom preview. That applies to both his new projects and his eponymous collection.The fall lineup picks up threads from last season, which leaned earthier and craftier than other periods in the label’s 13-year run. “It was about communing with nature and giving into wanderlust,” Altuzarra said. “I loved the idea of this narrative of a sailor that’s seduced and then transformed into a mermaid.” You saw that evolution play out on the runway.The show opened with marinière shirts, long wool skirts modeled on a kilt Altuzarra had made for himself on a recent trip to Scotland, and military-inflected outerwear, including the season’s definitive pea coat with a swaggering stand-up shearling collar. The middle section was punctuated with tie-dyes, a signature that Altuzarra revived to much success for spring. The news here was that it was knits, not wovens, that were dyed, which gave the dresses a more sensual feel, accentuated by ruching and midriff cut-outs. Dip-dyed cashmeres will be popular too.As the collection continued, Altuzarra really dug into the theme, making a pair of dresses and a cropped cardigan and maxi skirt combo from a knit his studio developed that looks like the scalloped pattern of fish scales. They were marvels. His mermaids wore net dresses fully embroidered in graduated metal sequins with a patina that looked like it had been aged by seawater. These were strictly showpieces, but he’ll reproduce their effect for production with lighter-weight plastic paillettes.A decade ago, Altuzarra’s breakthrough collection leaned into the kind of military tailoring here. “I’ve been in business long enough that I’m sort of looking back a bit,” he said. “I think there’s a recognition from customers, that sense of like, ‘Oh yeah, this is really Altuzarra, this is what the brand is about.’” Equally, though, there are parallels here with his new line Altu, where he’s made questioning the gender binary part of his design practice. Altuzarra is really firing on all cylinders.
13 February 2022
Welcome back, Joseph Altuzarra! It was 2017 when Altuzarra left New York for Paris in a wave of established designers looking for more visibility on the international stage. The pandemic kept him here this season; when it was announced in May that he’d be showing, his return became part of the narrative around a revived NYFW schedule. His show today lived up to that build-up, and then some. Tapping into instincts he described as “eclectic and even a touch escapist” yielded his best collection in years. Being on familiar turf didn’t hurt, either. The hometown crowd gave him a rousing cheer when he came out for a bow.“It wasn’t easy, especially with the anti-Asian violence,” Altuzarra said of his pandemic experience, echoing a sentiment expressed often this week. “But I felt this intense kinship with New York; I wanted to be part of the rebuilding or rebirth.” He did that by going back to his foundations. The collection started with a reprise, of sorts, reviving the beloved shibori dyeing of his spring 2016 collection on separates and dresses layered with bikini tops in the same richly colored patterns. The difference this time around was the dyeing was done on knits, a growing category for Altuzarra and many others. The same body-loving, but easy-to-wear shapes also came in solids.Altuzarra said he looked at a treasured book, Charles Fréger’sWilder Mann, and its photographs of pagan rituals and celebrations of spring, for inspiration. “I responded to the idea of finding magic and wonder and myth in nature. In our everyday life we get bogged down by details and minutiae,” said Altuzarra. What made this collection so compelling was the way he merged everyday relatability with magical, hand-rendered touches: the aforementioned shibori knits, the crochet paneling he added to his sharp tailoring, the floral bundle printing of silk evening dresses that were evocative of customer-favorite bias-cut, charm-trimmed evening dresses from spring 2015.The spring 2022 favorites, of this editor at least, are the plissé jackets worn with matching skirts, one in gold lamé, the other in a blue marble print. The gold lamé jacket was laced sensually closed in front; it looked dressy but unprecious at once, a combination that feels especially attuned to our time. Bravo.
12 September 2021
“Comfort, but make it fashion.” After 12 months of Zooms, how have we not heard that one before? Joseph Altuzarra was the clever designer who came up with it on a video call withVogueeditors earlier this week. He did develop his new fall collection with an eye to comfort, but that doesn’t mean it’s dressed down. Rather, Altuzarra seemed to be thinking about ways to synthesize the polish and sophistication his brand stands for with the ease we’ve all grown accustomed to over the last year.The collection shoot was staged in a well-appointed Manhattan townhouse. A tufted velvet couch and fireplace drove home the loungeability of the heavy-gauge ribbed knit layers, cashmere underpinnings, and jersey tailoring he made for fall. But should we indeed be sprung from our various confinements by the time these clothes are available, they’ll help smooth our transitions into more formal situations. For both the glamorous and the germ-averse, he’s showing many of the looks with elbow-length gloves.Typically Altuzarra sketches his collections, but this time around he said he experimented with collage, landing on butterfly wings as a motif. As we shed our chrysalises, the re-emergence dress may very well become the piece we splurge on. There are a good many contenders for the role here, including a couple that revive the popular tie-dyed frocks Altuzarra made half a decade ago. The standouts, though, are definitely the butterfly wing dresses. Effortless but impactful in their panoply of colors, they were quite laborious to make; each one was arranged on pleated construction paper, so the factory could engineer the prints as precisely as was required.Altuzarra also takes the prize for most tempting and timely footwear. For anyone not quite ready to shed their house slippers when the lockdowns finally lift, he’s made delicate shearling trimmed sandals with drop pearl embellishments.
6 March 2021
Dunewas one of the many books Joseph Altuzarra read during lockdown. On a Zoom call, he described the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert as one of the very early environmental books. “It really resonated with me and my anxieties about survival,” he said. As a designer Altuzarra also connected with Herbert’s descriptions of what people wore to endure difficult conditions. A Denis Villeneuve remake of David Lynch’s iconic 1984 film adaptation is due at the end of the year, so there’s a timeliness to Altuzarra’s starting point this season.We aren’t a feudal interstellar society yet—this will not be mistaken for Altuzarra’s one-and-only sci-fi collection. But he and his peers are designing for a changed world, one that has reprioritized questions of comfort and practicality and shifted notions about what’s sexy. The high-slit pencil skirts that were his earliest signature, for example, are not a factor. Instead, many of the skirts here have airy volumes, while the slinkier ones are adaptable, with functional baroque pearl buttons tracing the seams that allow the wearer to decide how much leg to show off. A restraint/release theme carries over into other garments, including dresses with caped, cocoon-like shoulders that can be peeled back—“morphed,” is the word he used—to create a different silhouette.A video Altuzarra made chronicles how he put the collection together. “It’s about opening up the process and not trying to hide the scrappy part of me—letting people see the passion and love,” he said. Resourceful might be a better word than scrappy. One of his most compelling innovations this season is the re-crafted material he made by shredding old Altuzarra fabrics and re-knitting them into separates and bags, which have been an early hit with retailers. Another is the pleating story, which Altuzarra likened to “almost a couture development.” It involved cutting traditional pleats and heat pressing them back together, with results that are wavy and irregular rather than strict—and more interesting for it.“I’ve vacillated between extremes this season,” Altuzarra confided, “elated but also scared, inspired but also stifled, kind of optimistic and hopeless as well. I wanted to be honest about how I felt.” As we approach the end of fashion month, the surprise of the pandemic is just how galvanizing it has been for designers. ThisNew York Timesheadline resonates: “The Pandemic Depression Is Over. The Pandemic Recession Has Just Begun.
” Business may be down—but creativity is up.
3 October 2020
Joseph Altuzarra was in the midst of fitting his resort collection the last time he left his office in March. Over the course of the next few months, the clothes morphed in response to the changing world situation. Like other designers affected by the pandemic, Altuzarra latched onto notions of familiarity and ease. Fans of the label will recognize, for example, this collection’s gingham check from a spring 2015 show. In fact, he used the very same material on a deconstructed shirtdress here. He also re-created the gingham on the stretchy knit material he used for a cardigan, cami, and tube skirt ensemble that he says did well with buyers.That three-piece ensemble is representative of the comfort he built into the new offering. Following a similar line of thinking, he added knit trim to a shearling wrap coat, designed a “shacket” in the same soft flannel as a pair of matching trousers, and otherwise rethought the suit as matching knit separates. Occasionwear got a reimagining too as one of those three-piece ensembles in a biscotti-color yarn with gold sequins threaded in. Driving home the point about relaxation and well-being, Altuzarra paired the evening look with thick lug-soled lace-up boots. Turns out, he developed those boots pre-COVID-19. “I wanted something more utilitarian; they’re sort of like what I wear every day,” he explained.Regarding that long ago spring 2015 show, I wrote, “Sex is rarely far from the surface at a Joseph Altuzarra show.” Come to think of it, the subject of sex has rarely come up in this lockdown season, despite the preponderance of what we’ve all agreed to call at-home clothes. But Altuzarra addressed the topic, descriptions to the contrary notwithstanding. The deconstructed shirtdress was worn open at the neckline to reveal a matching bra top, and the skirt of the cozy evening ensemble came with one of his trademark slits. If we’re not going back to the office anytime soon, let’s at least have some fun. Right?
10 August 2020
Perhaps because he’s a new parent, Joseph Altuzarra was thinking about heritage and tradition this season. He’s one half Chinese, one half French, but it’s safe to say that his French roots have been more central to his brand story up until now. For fall he changed the plot. A box full of his Chinese grandmother’s decades-old clothes, which he inherited due to a move, was his starting point. He and his team unpacked the box piece by piece in his studio and picked up on small details: the wrinkles where the clothes had been folded, the handmade darts of jackets, the unique necklines of the cheongsams.Those observations found their way into Altuzarra’s new collection, the overall impression of which was more elegant and ladylike than his recent outings. “I wanted it to feel purer,” he said. To start, he showed portrait-collar coats and suits, with exposed darts at the waist and pressed folds down the arms. The portrait collars and the built-in crinkles made a reappearance at the end in a silvery material that was 95 percent metal and 5 percent silk. In between, he devoted his energies to dresses.The classic cheongsam got a reevaluation, with a cellophane silk overlayer for a “seen through the haze of time” effect and a second removable Western collar as a two-for-one bonus. There were also soft ribbed knit dresses in the same body-limning shape and gauzy shirtdresses in deep watercolor shades of blue and green. Antique jewelry from the New York shop De Vera—coral stickpins, Baroque pearl rings, Tahitian pearl earrings—added a grace note.If Altuzarra mostly abandoned the bohemian and the homespun of last season, he didn’t reject frivolity. His clutch bags were embellished with colorful plumes—he called them “feathery pets”—as were his shoes. That said, you’d like to see him let loose a bit more. There’s so much goodwill around the designer that he could consider taking a risk or two. What happens when his lady lets her hair down, for instance? And while we’re on the subject of heritage, Altuzarra is a New York designer, and if ever there was a moment when his hometown Fashion Week could use a bit of good news, this is it. The city would welcome him back with open arms.
29 February 2020
Over the summer Joseph Altuzarra took a two-week trip to Japan and he put the experience to use in his new pre-fall collection. While traditional dress influenced the silhouettes of many pieces—the biodegradable PVC belts were inspired by obis and a sharply cut jacket had the lapel-less line of kimonos—the country’s rich art history animated others. A flower print that appeared on the underside of a blazer’s lapel and on the lining of a dress whose neckline folded open was lifted from Edo period nature illustrations, and the contemporary artist Ichiro Tsuruta gave Altuzarra exclusive permission to reproduce his painting of a woman’s face as a placement print on a bomber jacket and sheath dress. Tokyo’s neon lights dictated not only the fluorescent color palette of pantsuits, but also the hazy florals of silk dresses, which were designed to evoke blurry nighttime photographs.“The tension between the reverence for tradition and the passion for the future,” was Altuzarra’s big takeaway from his Japan experience. The shibori pieces he produced with a Nagoya-based shibori studio would seem to fall firmly into the former category, but in fact they required some forward thinking: His pattern called for the dresses to first be smocked, then dyed, a process that the studio had never attempted before. Shibori being a cousin of American tie-dye, these off-the-shoulder dresses in the motif had a bohemian flair, but by and large this collection struck a sultrier, back-to-his-origins note than Altuzarra’s recent outings. Consider the evening numbers, which were bound in the “traditional Japanese bondage” style, not with ropes but with crystal-studded cords. Altuzarra said they followed the strapping and knotting techniques in the latter, though he did quip, “This isnotsomething I did in Japan.”
9 December 2019
Joseph Altuzarra and his husband are expecting their first child in November. They’re having a girl! In preparation, Altuzarra has been knitting baby things; his mother and grandmother taught him to knit when he was young and gave him sweaters they had knit themselves. Handcrafts worked their way into his new Spring collection in the form of granny square halter tops layered between button-downs and blazers, or worn solo with midiskirts. Impending fatherhood has also found Altuzarra thinking about heirlooms: Which pieces are cherished most? And what gets handed down through the generations? Remembering the sweaters that were knit for him, he said, “They defied disposability because they had so much emotion; they were made by hand.”That stream of thought produced dresses patchworked from striped silk tie fabric with a substantial hand, others, collages from polka-dot silk scarves and reinterpretations of Barbour coats in red linen or a cinnamon-color suede. The future hand-me-down as a concept has become a refrain this season. Designers are looking to the past to determine what’ll be valuable in the future. This can produce anachronisms; certain collections have looked almost suspended in time. Altuzarra’s felt fresh and contemporary. That’s down to the vibrant color palette and his confident all-American sportswear.Tailoring formed the foundation of the collection. It took its cues, as many have this season, from the lean silhouettes of the 1970s. Single-button blazers with extra-wide lapels topped high-waisted flares or shorts that split the distance between Bermudas and culottes. Some of the suits were styled without tops, which has become another (somewhat puzzling) theme this season. Off the runway, Altuzarra’s customers will pair them with one of his striped poplin shirts. On the accessories front, the new Cuff bag has a traditional shape with clever magnetic hardware that pinches it closed, but the would-be heirloom is the new crochet version of his popular espadrille-sole bag.
28 September 2019
Joseph Altuzarra’s range spans earthy sensuality and urban sophistication. Taking cues from Robert Altman’s 1977 classic3 Women, the designer emphasized the former in his new Resort collection, without sacrificing any of his signature polish.The waist of a Lurex striped caftan, one of the lineup’s highlights, was gathered with tumbled tiger’s eye and lapis stones strung on leather cord, and the handkerchief hem dresses that have proven so popular for him in the past were printed with mandalas made from flowers. Much of the action in3 Womentakes place at a desert health spa, but the mandalas and crystals feel distinctly of this moment—attuned to our earth-in-the-balance fixations on wellness and witchy mysticism.The ecological predicament we find ourselves in has encouraged sensitive designers to reconsider their production methods. Altuzarra has taken his first steps in this direction, creating a pair of dresses—one midi-length, the other maxi—patchworked from chevron stripes of deadstock fabrics and materials from his own previous collections. They were utterly winning—statement-making but easy, in the manner of his best work—so it was good to hear that he’s keeping sustainability initiatives top of mind for Spring 2020.The clever developments on the accessories front included a lace-up suede espadrille boot lined in shearling. Striking a modern note amidst the more traditional stacked heel boots and pumps, it would add a breezy charm to one of his handkerchief hem dresses. He also iterated on his successful espadrille soled tote; the new clog bag has a sturdy but lightweight wood bottom.
31 May 2019
After his last Paris show, Joseph Altuzarra and his husband went on vacation to Marrakech. Altuzarra said the sense of freedom and independence he experienced there was the feeling he wanted to conjure with his new collection. That’s not that far off from the spirit of his Spring outing, but where that collection felt like it was stuck on holiday, this one was designed to address multiple needs and scenarios, without losing its wanderlust-ing vibes.Since his first collection exactly 10 years ago, Altuzarra has displayed a maturity that belies his years. In his best collections, practicality has gone hand in hand with the sensuality he’s better known for. These clothes reminded this longtime Altuzarra watcher of one of his early breakthroughs, Fall 2012, which was characterized by a similar blend of assertive tailoring and outerwear, Morocco-by-way-of-India prints and decorative motifs. In fact, a couple of the pieces looked further back than that. Altuzarra resurrected a cashmere wool wrap coat with mink fringe from his Fall 2009 debut as both a leather Perfecto and a trench with removable leather sleeves. “I thought it still looked relevant,” he said.There was a handful of coats here designed for longevity, among them a classic black double-breasted, midi-length style in wool, and a trench in a black and white tattersall check. With others, he took a more playful approach, needle-punching the yoke of a Fair Isle sweater to a zebra-stripe coat, or giving a biker jacket cable-knit sleeves.That hybridizing technique extended to the ready-to-wear: Minidresses mashed up T-shirts and paisley prints, and longer dresses combined fisherman’s knit bodices with plissé lamé skirts. This wasn’t experimentation for experimentation’s sake, but an effort on Altuzarra’s part to achieve a certain kind of ease. In the end, though, nothing beats the simplicity of a good dress. The designer has been a go-to resource for easy-to-wear statement dresses since his earliest days. This season’s entrant in that category was a one-shoulder, ruffled, plissé paisley.
2 March 2019
After his Spring show in Paris, Joseph Altuzarra and his husband took a short holiday in Morocco. His new Pre-Fall outing nods to North Africa, but it’s less a literal ode to Marrakech than it is what Altuzarra described as his effort to evoke the “empowering” experience of travel. “The energy of seeing something new, and the idea of independence—that you can go anywhere—was something I was into,” he says.The task for Altuzarra this season, then, was incorporating that sense of boundary-less expansiveness into his urbane, polished aesthetic. Arguably, the look that captured it best was the first (pictured here): a Carhartt-ian field jacket worn with a softly draped white blouse and fairly swashbuckling black leather pants tucked into knee-high boots. The high waist and fuller legs of those leather pants, which he also showed in electric blue, felt fresh and directional.Sharp tailoring and sexy dresses with a bohemian spirit are the two pillars of the designer’s label. Rounding out the first category were pantsuits and topcoats in a natty black-and-white checked wool. He also used the material for an ’80s-ish miniskirt, another novel silhouette for the brand and one that’s performing well, Altuzarra said. On the boho dress front, there was a tiered slip dress in a Lurex striped fabric developed in-house, a plunge-front number in metallic lamé, and ruffled off-the-shoulder floral-print styles—lots of variety. The retail success of the espadrille “soled” tote Altuzarra launched for Resort spawned a new shape here: a smaller bucket bag.
29 November 2018
A quartet of Joseph Altuzarra’s own watercolor illustrations were printed as postcards and delivered as the invitation to his Spring show. The miniature paintings provided clues to his new collection: its references and its mood. Like his Resort offering, this outing took its cues from the Mediterranean: Altuzarra’s family has a home in Italy and he’s fond of films evocative of the region likeCinema Paradiso,Stealing Beauty, andCall Me by Your Name. Those movies, in particular the latter two, captured a certain sensual repose, and that was very much the spirit he was after with these new clothes. “I wanted the collection to feel happy, optimistic, colorful,” he said beforehand.The summertime escape, as it’s fantasized and as it’s lived, has become central to this season’s story. With their zesty palette and skin-revealing shapes, these clothes were definitely pitched to sunny holidays. First: the bikini tops, which he showed as part of matching sets that included cropped and fitted jackets and skirts with his thigh-baring signature slits. Second: the crochet separates and dresses, a pair of which he decorated with thousands of little shells that shimmied and jangled as the models wove their way around the Hôtel Potocki. For evening, he translated the abstract florals of the bikini looks into three-dimensional paillette-embroidered dresses or separates that exposed the midriff. Even the suits, which he cut from gingham-print jersey, had an undone attitude.You could understand why Altuzarra went so far in this direction. But his clients’ true natural habitat is the city and its attendant obligations: the office, after-work events. There were suggestions here and there, like the knit tunic and knit pant combinations, but it would’ve been satisfying to see more of what Altuzarra has in mind for her to wear when she’s not on vacation.
29 September 2018
Joseph Altuzarra has long been a fan of André Aciman’s novelCall Me by Your Name. When the Luca Guadagnino movie came out last November, he was seduced all over again. Its Italy-in-the-summer beauty, along with that of his parents’ own home in the countryside between Rome and Naples, inspired his new Resort collection, most obviously via a landscape motif that he used on everything from sequined cocktail dresses to intarsia knit separates to postcard tees.More interesting was how the novel and film’s themes of surrender and letting go suffused Altuzarra’s latest work. Sensuality has always been central to his vocabulary, but in the past he has approached it with a certain rigor. Here, he wanted to explore the idea of unraveling. That translated into tailoring that was sliced away at the rib cage or with seams that swooped around the back in curving, not straight, lines. Dresses, meanwhile, came with hems that were alternately dip-dyed or circled by a ring of cutouts. Sleeves spilled off one shoulder to reveal the lace-edged cami underneath, and necklines were traced with ties to adjust the deshabille factor. The collection’s prettiest print was a cornflower blue–on–black wallpaper floral that Altuzarra described as blurry “as if with movement.” He’s been spending his free time painting with watercolors, the results of which showcase his eye for detail.We like where Altuzarra is going with the undone thing, but to be sure, these clothes were still pristine. He might’ve pushed the concept further with rough-hewn linens or more cottons like the pretty microcheck shirtdress embroidered with tiny flowers. A clever new suede tote with braided leather straps and a woven espadrille “sole” was the item that best capturedCall Me by Your Name’s irresistible earthy sensuality.
1 June 2018
For Fall, Joseph Altuzarra’s second show in Paris, he brought us to La Coupole, a famous brasserie in the 14th. It’s as evocative of his youth on the Left Bank as his new collection is designed to be of his grown-up life in New York City now. At a preview, Altuzarra explained that he established a simple rule for himself this season: “I wanted to make things that my friends and women I know want to wear.”Altuzarra has always had his feet on the ground. How else do you land an investment deal with Kering when your brand is barely five years old? But with a new spot on the Paris schedule and Princess Mononoke (a fictional character) as a muse last season, the styling of the show got a little carried away.Trajectory corrected, Altuzarra delivered an eminently practical wardrobe here. He started with pin-striped tailoring, made distinctive with double-layered cropped jackets accented with a row of horizontal buttons; shoulders were wide and the silhouette was quite waisted. Dresses, in contrast, were soft, unstructured, and bohemian in feeling, in both tiny floral motifs on silk and tie-dye patterns on velvet. Their easy-wearing sensibility extended into the evening numbers that closed the show. In the past, he’s often put red carpet showstoppers in the mix, but these smocked flower-print frocks embroidered with sequins and silver rings were designed for repeat use. Investing in them would be a no-brainer because it wouldn’t be a one-and-done equation.In a season of great outerwear, Altuzarra had a few contenders. A pair of tie-dyed shearlings made big statements, and more understated peacoats and top coats came with heavy-gauge hand-knit collars, a thoughtful, inventive answer to real fur.
3 March 2018
Joseph Altuzarra invited editors to his studio this morning for a chatty presentation about Pre-Fall. He’s a designer who shines in this type of setting, comfortable riffing about both the creative and business sides of putting together a collection. This one started, he explained, with a deep dive into outerwear. He was specifically looking at the parkas of Fall 2011, a show that qualifies as his breakthrough for the way it synthesized his American and French impulses. Altuzarra tends to be celebrated for his clothes’ seduction factor, but a utilitarian strain has always defined his best work.This time around, he was preoccupied with coat linings. They’re lighter than the parkas he marched out for Fall ’11, which is apt considering this is a pre-collection that sits on sales floors all summer long. More interestingly, they’re a sort of canvas on which Altuzarra can show off the ways he and his label have grown in seven years. Look 1’s quilted cargo green coat, for example, was waterproof and fully reversible to a leopard print nylon, the very picture of practical chic. Cinching the coat was a leather belt studded with his logo, an Altuzarra first. Re: logos—the world probably doesn’t need another one, but a T-shirt scribbled with all the incorrect spellings of his brand name was a clever take on a ubiquitous trend. The reversible story continued with great looking jacquard knit cardigans modeled on kilim carpet patterns.There was equally as much to like on the sensuous side of the divide. Altuzarra reworked a handkerchief hemmed scarf dress that has proven to be a best seller, adding graphic leopard spots to the print (there’s his business side at work). A trio of evening dresses were cheekily shown with printed tights and sandals. The best of the bunch, in blue sequins, picked up on the collection’s leopard motif. And floral, frilly slip dresses were paired with cool suede boots studded with nailheads, part of his growing and well-considered footwear offering.
29 November 2017
Much has been made of New York designers moving to Paris this season, but Joseph Altuzarra’s case is unique. His father is French and his mother is Chinese-American, and there was a darling photo of Joseph as a young boy hugging a Paris tree, dated June 1990, on his invitation. Having grown up here, his show at the Lycée Janson de Sailly tonight was both a coming-out party and a homecoming.In New York, where he’s shown for almost 10 years, the Altuzarra aesthetic reads quite French—the sexy nipped jackets, the sexy slit skirts. Altuzarra opted not to amplify that in his big Paris debut, though he did return to his childhood roots. He said the densely beaded bodices of the sequined evening dresses were modeled on the table runners in his grandmother’s French countryside home. On pieces like a patchwork crochet skirt and a tablecloth lace dress, the influence was more direct.Embracing the homemade and elevating humble traditions have become two of Spring’s most enchanting through lines. Altuzarra latched onto them after watching the Japanese anime filmPrincess Mononoke, the centerpiece of which is a battle between industry and nature. No surprise, Altuzarra comes down on the side of nature. A book documenting the make-do DIY style of 1970s rockers,Native Funk & Flash, also proved inspiring. Altuzarra did his most elaborate work on shearling vests and coats embellished with cowhide, mirror chips, and other found scraps. But there was craftiness to spare here, from the leather fringe on printed dresses and men’s tailoring to the pompoms tracing the hem of a striped canvas jacket and matching striped knit skirt, and many more pieces to boot.And yet, the most compelling looks were probably the simplest, like the shirtdress that combined broderie anglaise and a laser-cut floral print, or the breezy halter style that incorporated both those materials. Paris opened its arms to Altuzarra like a native son tonight, but this collection’s American ease was its selling point.
30 September 2017
At his showroom today,Joseph Altuzarratalked about mixing urban and rural references. He said his touchstones for Resort were the filmsAmerican PsychoandWorking Girl, both of which portray Manhattan corporate culture in the ’80s, and the traditional lacework and floral motifs of Brittany, France. An unlikely combination, maybe, but one that worked rather well because of his larger project, which was to inject the clothes with a new sense of ease. “It’s a softer, relaxed collection,” he said.Altuzarraarrived on the scene with a design identity stamped in Paris; he specializes in a sensual allure, hourglass tailoring, and side slits—and it seduces. But with the world tilting in a more casual direction—see the athleisure phenomenon, see fashion’s rush to streetwear—he’s doing some timely rejiggering of the formula.ThinkWorking Girl, think Wall Street, and think pinstripes. Tailoring is a key category for Altuzarra, but there were no straight-up suits here. In fact, his only true two-piecer came in shocking pink; otherwise he split up his suits, an idea he said he picked up from clients who’ve been wearing—and buying—their tailored pieces separately. The corporate raider connotations of those pinstripes, meanwhile, were tempered by cut and fit; in one case he cut them into an apron dress, in another he layered a lace slip under a cropped jacket. Banker button-downs got a rethink too, with collars peeling off the shoulders and the placket removed to the side of the torso. Sometimes he layered a snug, smocked bandeau over the top of them. Not boardroom-ready, but that’s entirely the point. Draped under jackets, Brittany’s traditional scarves, or fichus, further deformalized his tailoring.And don’t get it wrong, there was still plenty of that signature allure, but in a decidedly lower key. His most innovative idea for evening was pairing a sequin- and flower-embroidered tulle cape with a bright pink camisole and, marking a first for brand Altuzarra, dark rinse jeans.
8 June 2017
Joseph Altuzarra quoted Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth: “Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under ’t.” His goal this season, he said, was to paint a portrait of the Altuzarra client that’s complex. To do so, he looked at Northern Renaissance paintings. “It was a time,” he said, “when people became interested in how people really looked.” That’s seductive stuff for a designer like Altuzarra, who has always embraced the artful detail.Indeed, the beauty of this collection was found in its lush fabrications and equally rich embellishments, evidenced most sensationally in a mink coat stitched with teardrop pearls, and more subtly by pieces like a cable-knit sweater and matching skirt featuring delicate thread embroidery of flowers. Everywhere his materials begged to be touched, from the quilted, full-skirted garnet satin coat to the flocked dot motif of silk cady dresses.The risk of looking back so far into the past is obvious. How do you build in a sense of modernity? Altuzarra opted to show the collection on thick-soled combat boots, their eyelets adorned by pearls, and opaque black tights with runs in them. Here and there, and especially in the case of a sweeping charcoal flannel cape with frogging closures and pearl trim, he didn't manage to shake off a Ren Fair vibe. The best pieces wore their influences lightly: a black velvet tuxedo with gold embroidery on the jacket, a purple velvet dress with paillette and cut bead floral embellishments, a shrunken red velvet pant suit with rounded shoulders and flared, cropped hems.As per usual, the trio of closing gowns was exquisite. The dresses featured two kinds of embroidery—the chevron backgrounds were not prints, but narrow strips of fabric stitched together upon which Altuzarra layered the gold and glass embroidery. High-necked and cut not to cling, they’re hardly standard-issue Oscar fare, but any one of them would be stunning on a complex leading lady.
13 February 2017
During a friendly chat before his presentation this morning,Joseph Altuzarramade an offhand comment. “I love trunk shows,” he declared. One doesn’t hear that from designers every day, but perhaps one should.Altuzarra’s affection for his clients and his receptivity to their feedback—his Pre-Fall bags now come with top handles by customer request, for example—have put his brand in good stead. Where other labels of his generation are struggling and even shuttering, Altuzarra is gaining ground.His starting point this season was the Pre-Raphaelites and what he described as their “devotion to nature”—not a big leap from the cherries and lemons of hisWild at Heart–theme Spring 2017 lineup, but softer and more sophisticated. A botanical print dress with long, belled sleeves, gently belted, and featuring a fuller-than-usual skirt will be the Altuzarra number you see all the editors in next September. On the tailoring front—an essential part of the company’s business—he made a point of adding newness, either by cutting a blazer and kick flares in a vibrant orangey red or rethinking other jackets with zip closures, rounded shoulders, and kimono sleeves lifted from Victorian-era styles.Another woman-friendly idea: making cocktail dresses and other special event pieces at more reasonable prices. “I think women are feeling that everything has gotten too expensive,” he remarked, before ushering out a zip-front vest paired with embroidered organza kick flares, an embellished tunic-slash-minidress silhouette, and a silver sequin sheath, all of which will come in significantly less than the finale gowns he typically closes his shows with. In fact, there was a pair of floor-length dresses, but they were considered in their own way, with removable sleeves that lent them not just flair but also versatility.
29 November 2016
Joseph Altuzarra, like some other designers this week, set out to fashion an antidote for our uncertain, complicated times. “The election is hard,” he said before the show. “I wanted something that felt happy, joyous, flirty, and fun.” Who can argue with that?A film lover, Altuzarra looked at the David Lynch movieWild at Heartto get him started. The python print was lifted from a jacket sported by Nicolas Cage’s ex-con. Laura Dern’s Lula wore the precise shade of hot pink that Altuzarra used for a twin set belted over a pair of striped briefs. This wasn’t a literal homage—Altuzarra is too sophisticated a designer for that—but it did register higher on the coquette scale than his recent offerings, what with the sweet little cherry prints on ruffled slip dresses and matching hose, the sequined lemons stitched to denim-printed python (when life gives you lemons . . . ), and sundry other fruits that decorated everything from body-loving chenille knits to embroidered evening dresses. For the sugar averse—and there may be some who find all that too sweet—Altuzarra added cargo jackets and a matching army green pencil skirt piped in leather and snake. There were also sexy, stretchy stripe knit dresses and ruffled bra tops. (Bras are one of this week’s surprise trends.) Rounding out the collection was a good helping of gingham tailoring in a smaller check than the popular gingham from Altuzarra’s Spring collection of two years ago.Altuzarra’s got his signatures. One thing he’s known for is whipping up a dress that reliably turns up on the backs of half the fashion set. This season’s entry was a crinkled aqua blue gingham tie-front shirtdress.
11 September 2016
Ask a fashion person whatJoseph Altuzarrais known for, what he does best, and nine times out of 10 they'll tell you a pencil skirt with a thigh-high slit. Having a signature is essential to success on sales floors, but you have to know when to pivot, too. That's what Altuzarra did for Resort with his miniskirt. There was only one, but the black-and-white-check mini with buttons up one seam and, yes, a small slit up the other, added a youthful bit of cool to his sexy, sophisticated lineup. It made an impression on the editors assembled in his showroom this morning.Pivoting wasn't the whole story though. Altuzarra also devoted a fair bit of energy to reworking past hits, less so his pencil-skirt silhouettes, although there were many of those, and more so fabrics that look familiar from previous collections. The pied de poule from hisRosemary’s Babyshow was reimagined as a structured stretch cady pantsuit; the tie-dye technique he used for Spring ’16, and which you see in fashionable spots all over town, became a print that he used for a pleated skirt and a shirtdress.“I didn't want ‘a huge look,’ but things women want to wear every day,” he said, as the models made their exits. The Resort equivalents of the aforementioned Spring tie-dye we're seeing everywhere? If we had to hazard a guess, we’d bet it’ll be the navy knit dress he spliced with a red lace–trimmed slip dress. Everyday-ness also came across in the way he paired a collectible studded sweater with a sequined lace skirt. Both of them are precious enough on their own, but teamed up they captured an offhand cool similar to that of his new miniskirt.
9 June 2016
Joseph Altuzarrasaid his new collection began with the Jim Jarmusch filmOnly Lovers Left Alive. Not the vampires, he was quick to point out, but their curiosity. “They have very esoteric interests, and they live in a lush but isolated world. I wanted this show to be about trying different things not necessarily connected.” That instinct made for a rich lineup—dense with pattern, unlikely color combinations, tactile materials, and an alluring gypsy spirit. If you didn’t know about the Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston connection, you might’ve guessed that Loulou de la Falaise (who’s having a good week, having served as inspiration at Saint Laurent) was Altuzarra’s muse, what with the little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that styling, the midi lengths, and the emphasis on a narrow waist.Tailoring, as always chezAltuzarra, was key. It’s the bread and butter of Altuzarra’s business, but his single- and double-breasted neatly tailored blazers—some with flirtatious peplum backs—were hardly mundane, in floral and paisley jacquards inspired by antique Indian textiles. The jackets were paired with fluid skirts longer and more relaxed than his signature slit pencils, or worn with jogging pants outlined in graphic, aerodynamic velvet detailing. No one is immune to the athleisure movement, it would seem. Outerwear is another strong category for Altuzarra, and he had all kinds here, from chunky, outsize shearlings (heavy but warm, especially layered over an exuberantly fringed cardigan) to a glorious navy dress coat, the back of which was fully embellished with black soutache embroidery.But it’s this hometown favorite’s dresses that you see out and about at the September shows. A color-blocked shirt-front style that combined sapphire blue, emerald green, fuchsia, and ruby was a strong contender, as were the delicate, printed handkerchief-hem silk dresses worn over thin-ribbed-knit turtlenecks or henleys. Altuzarra used the same silhouette on a pair of exquisite evening gowns, reproducing the print with elaborate silver sequin embroideries. A two-piece evening look—black lace-front top and long, handkerchief-hem skirt—was equally ravishing, but even more appealing for its mix-and-match potential. Special props for the models’ untamed natural curls.
14 February 2016
Pre-Fall appointments give designers a chance to speak their minds. Listening toJoseph Altuzarratalk at his presentation this morning, it was clear: He’s got his customers on the brain. A new capsule collection, dubbed Shadow Jersey, consisted of six sharply tailored pieces his fans will recognize as made from tech jerseys that come out of the suitcase wrinkle-free. Elsewhere, he emphasized shirtdresses because they’re doing well for the brand; ditto a fitted double-breasted coat. Peacoats, he pointed out, were the engine that got his label going back at the beginning. In stores for five months or more, Pre-Fall has to cover a lot of ground. It inevitably brings out a designer’s business instincts.But Altuzarra didn’t fail to romance the collection either. As much as practicality moves product, so do whimsy and desire. And this lineup, with its emphasis on pattern (polka dots and cricket stripes) and texture (paillettes of many sizes, crochet, stretchy knits), will stand out in the shops. Those multicolored, multisize paillettes registered as the most eye-catching development, whether they appeared on a fitted tank paired with a tweedy blazer and signature slit skirt (a flamboyant look for day) or on more traditional evening items like a knee-length cocktail slip or a statuesque bias-cut gown with cutouts on the front and back of the torso. Shirtdresses with a modernized 1930s silhouette—fluted hems, frayed/edged sleeves, waists cinched with croc belts—had a more understated, subtle charm. A growing handbag range will qualify as more good news for Altuzarra customers. Now if only he could produce the fabulous resin earrings all the models wore.
1 December 2015
There are responsibilities laid before fashion designers like 32-year-oldJoseph Altuzarra, the chief of which is the pressure to capture the times in the form of clothes. This season, one of the instincts which is being thrust to the fore is escapism, or at least a resistance to the troubling forces at work in the world. Altuzarra’s answer to that was a Spring collection he described in his studio as “Very serene, about the beauty of materials which are close to nature, like linen, cotton and burlap; things which are not fussy, and meant to look wrinkled.”The search for authentic emotion led him to research the Spanish side of his identity—the heritage of his father’s upbringing in the rugged Basque region of northern Spain, home to self-reliant mountain-dwelling and sea-faring people. On the other hand, Altuzarra’s own reality is very much attuned to a certain modern urban woman’s demands, or at least his interpretation of them: It’s all very well yearning for the wild and free, but what does that look like when walking on the streets of New York?Altuzarra’s creative compromise could be read in the details: high-heeled espadrilles (partly made by a Spanish craftsman), braided jute shoulder straps on skimpy linen camisole dresses, and rope frogging on navy nautical blazers and jumpsuits. He had worked hard on injecting a sense of the handmade into his textiles, with lots of pleating derived—at some distance—from folkloric costume; hand-painted prints in greens, blues, and sunrise orange; and some beautiful micro beaded embroideries on broderie anglaise at the end.It made for a collection which was at its most appealing in the hand and on a rail, where the minutiae and the weightlessness of the fabrics—and their rare luxurious qualities—could be felt. One could also see Altuzarra’s pragmatic understanding of clothes that can perform in the midst of urban heat (as well as the close-up chic of such things as the tan leather saddle-stitched clip-on earrings).On the runway, though, the presentation somehow lacked the sense of joie de vivre women look for in summer, even in baking cities, and on their way to work. Maybe that had to do with Altuzarra’s choice of uniformly ultra-slim models, whose unsmiling neutrality failed to bring his stated aim of carefree believably to life. Whether it’s summer, winter, or anything in between, Altuzarra's work, with its man-attracting slit skirts and dresses, would look a whole lot sexier on a knowing woman’s curves.
Customers would see that in a changing room, doubtless, but it would be a healthy, humanizing step forward if Altuzarra could bring himself to show it on the runway too.
13 September 2015
The dress of the season emerged from the backstage area about halfway through Joseph Altuzarra's showroom presentation this morning. Sleeveless and spliced together from colorful ikat prints with contrasting pleated panels inset at the front, back, and both sides of the knee-length skirt, it combined simplicity with a special quality. Despite the torrential June rain outside, that dress was instantly what everyone wanted to be wearing—or at least wished they had in their closet for the steamy summer days ahead.Sparking desire is something Altuzarra has seemed to have had an easier time of than most. It's a talent that he put to use on other dresses here stitched with swags of beads strung in the style of the Kuna tribe in Panama. Each string boasted a different order of beads, but when they were arrayed next to each other, they created a graphic, vivid pattern. A black-and-white woven leather coat with color-blocked, chevron suede pockets required an equally astounding amount of handwork. Altuzarra explained that it was the result of a branding project with the French art director Thomas Lenthal in which they stacked all the letters in the company logo on top of each other in a square. As gifted as he is, Altuzarra is just as on top of the business side of the equation. Beyond that branding effort, he mentioned a new emphasis on knits, designers' go-to big return category. They'll undoubtedly help his bottom line. Ultimately, though, where this collection really shone was with that standout dress and the one-off luxuries of the beaded pieces.
1 June 2015
Joseph Altuzarra's new handbag collection got its debut on his runway tonight. A cash influx courtesy of Kering, which invested in his brand late in 2013, made the new range possible. The polished leather bags, in large saddle shapes with thick, elaborately braided and tasseled straps, look unlike anything else on the market right now. That's no small feat. Take a gander the next time you're on an accessories floor. There are leaders and followers, and not much in between. Altuzarra's bags are a good metaphor for his business. From the start, he's been a designer who has known who his woman is. She's loaded, she's a provocateur, she's unafraid of a thigh-high slit.As the collections pass, Altuzarra fine-tunes things. For Fall he ladled in more menswear tropes than in recent seasons. There was a lot of Prince of Wales check here. Beforehand he said he was thinking about 18th-century dandies and Truman Capote's "swans" (Gloria Vanderbilt, Babe Paley, Slim Keith), the unifying factor being both parties' predilections for dressing up. And so the coats on which he used that Prince of Wales check came with a deep flounce at the hem and were paired with delicate lace dresses. Or a jacket in the stuff that featured a generous fox collar (fox is absolutely everywhere this season) topped a baby pink pencil skirt boasting ruffled trim on the hip pockets and that signature Altuzarra slit.It won't be hard to find a neatly tailored coat or jacket from Altuzarra come fall—indeed, it's no surprise to hear that outerwear is one of his best-selling categories—but this time around, it was the velvet dévoré dresses that really seduced. Cut in deep jewel shades of ruby and sapphire flecked with gold, their deep décolletages lined with fine white lace, they simultaneously channeled the 1970s and the 1890s without feeling encumbered by the past. They looked almost weightless.We'd be remiss not to mention the boots. Thigh-high, knee-length, or bootie, a tiny frill of white eyelet peeked out from the top. Delightful.For Tim Blanks' take on Altuzarra, watch this video.
14 February 2015
For Pre-Fall, Joseph Altuzarra was looking at traditional British dress—hunting and hiking gear, horseback-riding attire—but the English countryside has never looked this sexy. The designer's shrunken hacking jacket fit like a glove, and a houndstooth skirt featured one of the cutaway slits that have become his signature. The boxy waxed-cotton jacket that symbolizes Britishness from Cornwall all the way to California morphed into a slim, sleeveless jumpsuit. And a humble quilted jacket was rendered anything but with an extravagant white Mongolian lining. From that starting point, Altuzarra ventured into classic Americana: The leather appliqué on the shoulders of a silk chemisier dress was a direct nod to Western shirts. As for the leopard print on a cinched goatskin coat, he attributed it to British eccentricity, but it'll always look French to us. Altuzarra's Frenchness came through, as well, in the provocative lacing and grommeting up the seams of an elongated black blazer and matching skirt. If there was something unyielding in that tailored skirtsuit, he loosened up for night. In no way, shape, or form did a belted dévoré cocktail dress in deep purple resemble the T-shirt it was apparently modeled after, but it captured its appealing ease. The crowd pleasers here—a fitted sweater and pencil skirt accented with patch pockets—tapped into a similar casually sexy vibe.
5 December 2014
Sex is rarely far from the surface at a Joseph Altuzarra show. The pink gingham of the first few outfits fooled you into thinking this was an unusual occasion on which he'd abstain, but if you looked closer the kinks became clear. An otherwise proper skirtsuit featured a dangerously high middle slit, and a perfectly pretty dress was gathered at the shoulders and tied loosely at the sides with ribbons trailing pearls, as if still askew from a tumble in the sheets. In real life and on the runway, that interplay of purity and provocation stokes desire. Altuzarra said he was looking atRosemary's Baby(Mia Farrow's unmistakable, haunting lullaby soundtracked the show) andBarry Lyndon. "Both movies are so beautiful," Altuzarra said, "but it's an ill-fated, sinister beauty. Which I liked."If those films conjure eras past, the clothes here hardly smacked of retro. Altuzarra has a modern touch. Modern, and light. A black and white striped crepe de chine shirtdress practically floated down the runway. Tucked into high-waisted tapering pants, a button-down and lightweight cardigan were more covered up, but the proportions were fresh and sexy—the girl in the outfit no less tantalizing than the one who was unbuttoned down to there. In any case, Altuzarra didn't let himself get hemmed in by plot. Striped Moroccan blankets were reworked into asymmetric wrap dresses and skirts, as well as an outstanding coat inlaid with leather trim. Fetish-y leather latticework pieces, meanwhile, were apparently inspired by Renaissance architecture.Altuzarra had the crowd right from the beginning, but the trio of finale gowns—"deflated 18th-century dresses," he called them—were so fabulous, so casual in their lavishness, it's hard to imagine anything this week will top them.
6 September 2014
It was kisses all around at Joseph Altuzarra's Resort presentation. He picked up the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year Award last night, two years after his Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent. Altuzarra has moved very quickly into fashion's big leagues. "I felt so happy to be nominated, but I'mveryhappy to have won," he said onstage.Beyond awards, there's also the game-changing Kering investment, an influx that helped him develop a new shoe collection, which had its debut today. He dubbed his Resort offering Querelle, after the Rainer Werner Fassbinder film. It meant there was a maritime theme, a burgeoning trend this season and a look that Altuzarra has successfully navigated before. He opened with a three-quarter-length peacoat with contrast piping and linings and a detachable collar. Sensible, considering this collection will arrive in stores just as winter starts in the Northern Hemisphere, and also irresistibly chic. From there, he riffed on sailor pants and tops, but not too literally, and revisited the peasant blouses he's made something of a pre-season signature, this time giving them a North African twist.For a young designer—at 30, he still qualifies—Altuzarra is a smart, methodical businessman. He's observed what works for his brand and has delivered new takes on those pieces here. Tailoring is a strong category, so naturally there was a beautifully cut white pantsuit. The news was in its asymmetric shawl collar; one lapel was draped like a scarf with a deep hem of silk fringe. And, as he put it himself, "it wouldn't be Altuzarra without slits," so he revisited the "very French, very bourgeois" little black dresses of Fall ’12. Slightly streamlined, they were still sexy as all get out. The surprise was in the long dresses, territory he's more or less avoided until now. A two-piece black look consisting of a floor-length skirt and a bow-front top longer in back than in front had us hoping that he keeps thinking along similar lines for Spring.
3 June 2014
Craft and luxury. They have been dear to Joseph Altuzarra since his very first collection five years ago this month. But signing on with Kering late last year has given him the means to explore them in even deeper ways. That's what Altuzarra set out to do for Fall—and at a venue, Spring Studios, where big guys like Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, and DVF are showing this season. Altuzarra is a big guy now, too, but he made that point in decidedly unflashy ways. There was an appealing simplicity to his clothes—less fashion, and more style.Take the double-face navy cashmere wrap coat with generous cobalt blue shawl collar that opened the show. It was a model of timeless refinement, as it was in the bolder combination of pine green and fuchsia that came later. Altuzarra cut skirtsuits in the same lofty, unembellished double-face cashmere and finished them with such a fine attention to detail that they could've easily been worn inside out. That was an idea that particularly resonated with him. An understated gray sheath was constructed with horizontal slits at the waist that exposed bright orange and coral linings, "almost," Altuzarra explained, "as if the back of the dress was being exposed."Counterbalancing the precision patternmaking that went into a number like that was a group of woven tapestry pieces. Hand-loomed by artisans here in New York, the tops and dresses were inspired by the 1970s textiles of Sheila Hicks, an artist Altuzarra discovered during Art Basel Miami Beach, a trip that also goes a ways toward explaining his unbridled use of color this season. They were beautiful—lavish and raw at once. Something similar was at work in the shearling jackets and coats that were modeled after Patagonia-style fleeces with patch pockets and linings in painted leather. A quick glance and they looked almost humble, but lay your hands on them and it was a different story. In the end, that was the big takeaway: There is grace and beauty to be found in comfort.
7 February 2014
Why mess with a good thing? Joseph Altuzarra's Spring collection was one of the most talked about of New York fashion week. Altuzarra remarked that editors called it in for photo shoots and made personal orders in equal measure. "That's powerful," he said. And so for his first-ever Pre-Fall collection, made possible by Kering's minority investment in his brand earlier this year, the designer hewed to a similar formula here, balancing elegance with a sense of unfussy ease and comfort. "Uncontrived," is the word he used for it. A popular peacoat from season's past got a boxy tweak, his signature side-slit skirt now comes in a swingy A-line shape (don't worry, ladies, it's still plenty sexy), and his clever sweater-shirt hybrids were re-envisioned in more casual cuts and fabrics. All welcome returns, but probably the happiest of all: his perfectly judged nip-waist blazers with the hemline that dips in back.The difference this season was the sense of play. Just for fun, Altuzarra whipped up fine-gauge knits with the French SAPEURS-POMPIERS logo striped across the chest. He pumped up the colors—red especially—and found convincing ways to mismatch cotton plaids, a sleeveless sheath with an hourglass-enhancing curved seam at the waist being the prime example. For the woman who takes seduction seriously, he also showed a red silk Romanian-style blouse tucked into a draped-front black skirt that had its echoes on his most recent runway.
3 December 2013
Joseph Altuzarra made headlines this week when it was announced that Kering (the mother ship behind Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney, among other labels) had taken a minority interest in his company. This collection was completed before the deal was signed, but the news added to the buzz surrounding the designer's show, already one of the most anticipated of the New York season.He didn't sweat it. Where his Fall collection felt somewhat strained, this one put the emphasis on effortlessness. Sometimes ease can be a code word for basics. Altuzarra embraces separates, but blouse or skirt or cropped jacket, each and every one is thoughtfully considered. It takes a lot of work to look as artfully déshabillé as Joan Smalls did in her striped silk button-down (down to the waist, that is) and three-quarter-length skirt with thigh-high slit. Willowy silhouette established, Altuzarra offered variations on a theme. Blouses also came in banker's blue cotton or a patchworked indigo print. Cropped jackets were hand-embroidered in the style of Japanese boro fabrics. And trompe l'oeil dresses looked like thin-gauge sweaters worn over narrow silk skirts. Other designers make a fetish of fantasy. Altuzarra genuinely gets off on making clothes for real life. For him, it's about the everyday, only elevated.For evening, Altuzarra sourced fabric made from metallic threads that looked like poured platinum and gold. The generous swags of fabric on the front of dresses and skirts added bulk between the waist and the hips. If there was a quibble here, it's that they'll prove troublesome for all but the slimmest of his clients. Fastened with a crystal-studded strap at the waist, his gorgeous smokings offered a more equal-opportunity chic.
6 September 2013
Joseph Altuzarra's fall show was aggressively sexy—we're talking serious man-killer clothes. But his woman is loosening up for Resort. At his presentation he explained that the "softer, more romantic" mood of the collection was cued by the way his muses Carine Roitfeld and Vanessa Traina have been dressing lately, with clothes that have a bit more give. "There's a sense that things are moving away from the body," he said. That was certainly true of the roomy Altuzarra pantsuit that Stella Tennant wore to the CFDA Awards on Monday night as the designer's date, and the same goes for the smocked off-the-shoulder number with billowy poet sleeves that he showed today. Folkloric-print and embroidered silk dresses, likewise, had a generous fit.It would seem, though, that Altuzarra isn't entirely prepared to give in to the slouch. There were echoes of the seventies in a sleek denim-look pantsuit, the fitted blazer printed with crocheted doilies. He did a seventies collection for Spring 2010, and to look back is to see how far he's come as a technician. Elsewhere, strategically placed hand-sewn lace insets put the accent on the body-loving cuts of other pantsuits and hourglass sheaths in black, white, and lingerie pink. The best look in the collection was a silk blouse with those lace touches tucked into a doily-print pencil skirt with a slit up the side. Once a man-killer…
4 June 2013
After his show, Joseph Altuzarra fessed up to being anxious all week. For Fall, he took a chance and stripped away the embroideries and embellishments, the fantastical narratives of his last two collections. Those extras can become a safety net for designers. Nerves or not, Altuzarra doesn't need one. Here he took his signals from the street, and the exercise in restraint helped him find his raw essence. He's designing the fiercest, sexiest clothes in New York, and that's reason enough for many women to seek him out."It forced me to be much more demanding about tailoring, cut, and fit," Altuzarra said of his new ethos.Demandingis a good word for coat-dresses with tiny waists and padded-out hips, and super-constructed double-breasted power suits with shiny gunmetal buttons topped by cropped vinyl boleros. Vinyl was the surprise. He used it for shrunken motorcycle jackets worn solo or over the top of khaki trenches. Unlike leather, it's rainproof, and so, says Joseph, it ages better. He also engineered it into hourglass dresses and tops with fur shoulders and sleeves. Leather, which has more stretch, proved the better material for other body-con dresses sliced below the hips with zippers from which were suspended sheer chiffon skirts.Some saw Catherine Deneuve inBelle de Jourin the clothes, others shades of Thierry Mugler's famous motorcycle bustier. More than anybody this collection looked like Carine Roitfeld, the former editor in chief ofParis Voguewho is Altuzarra's biggest muse. She'll surely fall for the furs—extravagant black and white fox chubbies, a couple pairs of huge, silly mittens. Altuzarra reports that he has the best sell-throughs with the most expensive pieces. Those will be doozies. For the girls in the audience still climbing the ladder, he also cuts one mean pair of pants.
8 February 2013
Part of it had to do with the powerhouse front row—Jessica Chastain, Kate Bosworth, the Knicks' center Tyson Chandler (all 7 feet, 1 inch of him)—but the energy at Joseph Altuzarra's show tonight was popping. After Fall's breakout collection, the audience was expecting big things from the CFDA's Swarovski Award winner for womenswear. And big things is what he gave us. Actually, make that many small things that produced a big impact. Starting with the jackets. Altuzarra proved himself a standout tailor last season, with his focus on outerwear. Here he came up with a clever way to stretch a blazer's lifespan well into summer: vents through which you put your arms like a cape, rather than the sleeves, so that the jacket stays in place on your shoulders. "It's how editors wear their coats," he said of the genesis of the idea. His fabrics deserve a mention, too: railroad stripes like the OshKosh overalls you wore as a kid (one of the week's burgeoning trends), and a brown the exact same shade of clay that Carhartt uses. Breast-pocket patches announcing the Altuzarra logo were another thing he borrowed from the workwear brands. No one is going to be driving spikes in these things, but they nonetheless had a no-nonsense feel that will put them at the top of women's spring shopping lists.The evening numbers, in sharp contrast, had an almost couture sensibility, constructed as they were with lavishly bejeweled and embroidered silks wrapped around the torso and neck, trailing gold chain fringe. But here again the designer instituted his fuss-free policy. They all came with deep zippers down the back for slip-on-and-go ease. Altuzarra is a big believer in the power of one piece—more time to buckle up your knee-grazing Gianvito Rossi for Altuzarra sandals!—and picking up where his Resort line left off, he showed a trompe l'oeil dress that looked like a banker's button-down tucked into a high-waisted printed silk pencil skirt."M-A-J-O-R," a colleague pronounced when the last model did her victory lap. You'd have been hard-pressed to find a fashion-loving soul in the house who disagreed.
7 September 2012
Joseph Altuzarra picked up the Swarovski Award for new design talent at the CFDAs last week, and he earned it all over again with a strong Resort lineup that touched on two developing trends: safari and gypsy. If his breakout Fall collection put the focus on sportswear, the body-defining dress was the beneficiary of his attention this season. Most of them looked as if they were two pieces—a striped chambray tank tucked into an ikat pencil skirt, or a long-sleeved tee with bustier details paired with another slim skirt with an undulating ruffle down its front. All of them were cinched with a belt, some in Rastafarian red, yellow, and green inspired by the new documentaryMarley. Altuzarra explained that his clients like the look of an ensemble but appreciate the zip-and-go ease of a single piece. He works harder so they don't have to.That's not to say there weren't great separates here. A gypsy blouse with sequins down the sleeves and a tweed skirtsuit embroidered with wooden beads both boasted incredible handwork—couture detail but with an artisanal feel. The tailoring was top-notch, too, especially a khaki cape that from the back looked like a sexy structured trench.
11 June 2012
There are moments in a designer's rise that you're happy to be around for. Tonight at Joseph Altuzarra's show was one of those times. He's had hits before (counting the Altuzarra Fall '11 parkas and knockoffs in the crowd has been a fun way to pass the time between shows this week) but none of them have been quite as ambitious or as all-around successful as this.Altuzarra chose Corto Maltese, the protagonist of an adult French comic from the sixties and seventies, as his starting point. "He was a sailor, his mom was a gypsy, and his dad was Venetian." That gave the designer a reason to really dig into military-influenced tailoring. Describing the fabulous fur peacoats, velvet blazers, and shearling toggle coats (gold-plated horn toggles, to be precise) would take up too much space here, but suffice it to say there were some real swashbucklers, and that for every jacket, there was an equally great-looking pair of corduroy flares or slim cargo pants peeking out from above thigh-high boots.But that was only part of the story. Maltese was a traveler and his adventures in Morocco and India provided a premise for the collection's kutch banjara dresses over-embroidered with medallions (we can already see the magazine editorials), as well as more real-world-ready material like chunky yet fitted knits decorated with colorful pompons and printed with tapestry motifs.In between there was a trio of little black dresses that read as very French, veryBelle de Jour. And fans of Altuzarra, meanwhile, will recognize callbacks to previous seasons; a draped jersey dress in a Moroccan carpet print, for example, looked like the descendant of the lamé cocktail numbers from his breakout Fall '09 show. It's not everybody in New York who can riff on their own work and still find something new to articulate."I just wanted to do things that women want to wear," Altuzarra said before the show, "to figure out how to make clothes that look rich but feel easy." We'd say he's done it and then some.
10 February 2012
Since he burst onto the scene, Joseph Altuzarra has made a habit of big change-ups. Seventies hippie-chic one season, nineties Tom Ford the next. He opted for evolution, not revolution, this time around, though. Who can blame him? Last season's grunge-influenced, outerwear-focused lineup has been a big hit in the stores; the utility jackets sold out on Net-a-Porter the day they became available. He still has his eye on the street for Spring. There were plenty of statement coats here, from the light-as-air white nylon windbreaker that he opened with to a techno-fabric parka so glossy it looked like liquid. In between we saw a lot of leather, quilted into moto jackets that molded to the torso, or cut into sweeping sleeveless coats.But outerwear was only one aspect of this bold collection; the others were sport and prints—two emerging themes in New York. Built-in parachute straps (a bit gimmicky, admittedly) accented the shoulders of sleeveless dresses, while track pants came with racing stripes down the sides. Tops that were one part baseball jersey, another part scuba suit suggested that this designer has absorbed the lessons of a certain influential Balenciaga show from the early aughts. As for the prints, like other New Yorkers so far this season Altuzarra has gone Hawaiian. He's given his girl the option of sampling the look with a killer white leather dress inset in front with a floral panel, or really going for it head-to-toe via a matching backless vest and trousers. Our guess is she'll choose option one.It's easy to forget that Altuzarra's business is not yet three years old. He's been confident from the get-go. But with this collection there's a depth and complexity to the clothes to match.
9 September 2011
After the grunge-fest that was Fall '11, it was a surprise to find Joseph Altuzarra in a sweeter mood for Resort. Still, despite the slight tonal shift, the loose and louche direction the designer explored last season was very much alive and well. "I wanted to keep working on the casualness of Fall," he said at a showroom presentation today. Altuzarra ticked off the south of France—particularly Saint-Tropez—and Brigitte Bardot as inspirations. It amounted to trading one acknowledged master (that'd be Marc Jacobs, whose spirit, for better or worse, hovers over all those who revisit grunge) for another (Yves Saint Laurent, patron saint of la Côte d'Azur).If the new looks lacked some of the bracing surprise of the label's Fall offering, they also testified to the flexibility of Altuzarra's vision and his talent. There was plenty to like in this lighter, breezier collection. Lace-up tunics and shirtdresses—some with blocked leather panels—recalled vintage YSL. Eyelets (which, as a motif, are bewitching plenty of designers at the moment) added lightness to corseted dresses, cropped tops, and even sinuous flared trousers. They were also cleverly integrated into lightweight knit sweaters and deployed as a print on cotton poplin baby-doll frocks.Altuzarra brought the vintage feel up to the present by showing many of the looks with white low-top sneakers, made with his longtime collaborator Gianvito Rossi. And he revisited some of his newly minted house standards, too, for fun (and, no doubt, for profit). The parkas that thrilled the crowds for Fall are back in new, lighter-weight iterations: a throw-and-go cotton and a ghostly, translucent accent piece in shimmering white organza.
12 June 2011
We're coming up on the 20-year anniversary of Marc Jacobs' grunge collection, the one that got him fired from Perry Ellis before it turned him into an icon. At Joseph Altuzarra's persuasive Fall show tonight, the plaid dresses with the fraying edges, the slouchy brown cardigan, and the army parkas of the first few looks seemed like flashbacks to that seminal moment. But Jacobs wasn't the only nineties darling to influence Altuzarra this season. There were shades of John Galliano in the bias-cut silk slipdresses cinched with D-rings. "It started with the idea of not having to think so much about clothes," the designer said backstage, and it's true—this was a 180 from the daring cone-busted sheaths and hyper-precise tailoring of his last collection. "I wanted something longer and looser, something sensual and feminine, but utilitarian at the same time," he said. The pictures that inspired him: old photos of Kate Moss wearing parkas over her evening dresses, in the days when her accessory of choice was Johnny Depp.Altuzarra's preoccupation with the nineties puts him smack in the middle of things in these early days of the Fall 2011 season. And his interest in coats—there was one great example after another, from those parkas with their furry hoods to tailored tweed trenches to a bomber/cape hybrid that had people flashing back to his pal Alexander Wang's equally outerwear-focused show a few hours before—will make him very popular with retailers. All that and a pair of showstopping T-shirt dresses dripping in metal fringe and beads, to boot. Girls are going to be thinking quite hard indeed about how to get these clothes into their closets.
11 February 2011
For a newcomer, Joseph Altuzarra is an exacting designer. There was an uncompromising rigor to the 27-year-old's Spring collection of duchesse satin dresses and suits spliced with geometric strips of python and metallic leather, not to mention an impressively high level of workmanship. "I asked myself what makes clothes feel modern," the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund nominee said backstage, explaining that he looked to the Internet for answers, borrowing not only bits from the sixties, but also techno and tribal elements, as well as a hefty helping of French chic. We'd also throw in deconstruction, and subtle nods in the direction of both Tom Ford and Claude Montana.As complicated as that sounds, it all felt of a piece. It helped that Altuzarra worked within a narrowly defined color palette, opening with a series of white looks and closing with navy, connecting the dots in between with hits of neon (for leather belts and bangles) and the aforementioned python. It was cut into squares, triangles, and circles and patchworked onto the fronts of dresses in ways that accentuated the womanly form.The cone-shaped busts, in particular, will make Altuzarra's dresses difficult for all but the most daring women. But relatively more modest types could find pieces to satisfy: a clingy, densely knit navy tunic and matching flared pants; a nude python jacket with silver accents worn with full white trousers; a body-loving navy duchesse satin coat-dress with epaulets. Relative, here, is definitely the operative word.This wasn't quite the crowd pleaser that last season was, but there's no denying it was gutsy. Altuzarra's clarity of vision is going to take him a long way.
10 September 2010
In an abrupt shift from last season's dreamy seventies-inflected stenciled ponchos and shredded suede and point d'esprit apron dresses, Joseph Altuzarra sent out a fierce and fearless collection of structured tailoring, commanding outerwear, and seriously sexy dresses. Ironically, some designers have been moving in the opposite direction lately, and yet Altuzarra's counterintuitive move was completely convincing. Backstage he explained he wanted to explore the dichotomies between strength and fragility, modern reality and fairy tales. At the outset, it was hard to see where the fragility came in, so potent and imposing was the first model out in her jacket pieced together, in the au courant manner, from nubby wool, leather, and goat fur. A second glance, however, revealed that the seams at the back of the blazer's arms were stitched roughly, like sutures.TheEdward Scissorhandsmotif continued throughout: Sometimes the stitches were taut, revealing just a flash of skin between the curving seams of a pair of narrow pants; other times, Altuzarra took a looser approach, as when knitting together the splices in a stretchy hourglass dress. Even the boots were slashed to reveal the ankle. Belts and buckles, meanwhile, provided another suggestive element. There were shades of S&M in a pencil skirt with straps holding its hip-high slits together. The blood red evening dresses flashing décolletage and thigh weren't for the faint of heart, either.This was just Altuzarra's third collection, but the confidence of his technique and vision would suggest that his newcomer days are over.
12 February 2010
Last season's impressive debut stocked the front row at Joseph Altuzarra's Spring show with retailers. They must've left happy, because he delivered on the promise of that first show, and then some.Sensing it was time for a break with the 1980's, which have been so popular lately among young designers, he went in a more 1970's direction. Patchwork and "taking clothes apart" were his fixations for Spring, he said backstage. But we're not talking about any old hippie-dippy patchworks. Altuzarra mixed expensive white eyelet and Swiss dot with brown suede and swatches of basket weave into fitted apron dresses that didn't leave a lot to the imagination. He worked the same materials into jackets, vests, and pants that were more covered up but no less sexy.Altuzarra designed at Givenchy under Riccardo Tisci, who's about as hot as it gets in the fashion world right now. There are clearly similarities in the hyperfeminine sensibility of both designers' clothes. But Altuzarra is no copy artist. What's such a turn-on about him is his confidence. A pair of white ponchos, one hip length, the other long, with diamond stenciling at the hems, were pretty sensational—as gutsy and cool as the Heart song playing on the soundtrack. We're betting they made the It girls in the audience suddenly rethink all of the body-con clothes currently hanging in their closets.
11 September 2009