Alix Higgins (Q2609)
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Alix Higgins is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Alix Higgins |
Alix Higgins is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Walking into the Alix Higgins show at Carriageworks, the venue hosting most of the shows during Australian Fashion week, the energy felt different than prior days: electric and youthful. A draped red velvet cape-gown printed with splotches of color and the word PRETENSION opened the show, followed by a model in a sheer sleeveless shell top tucked into a mini skirt made from a deconstructed polo shirt. Models of all genders whizzed by in reconstructed pieces that seemed like they had been pieced together in an urgent fury, including striped polos slashed on the sides, a shirt and skirt made from myriad white t-shirts. It was exactly the impression Higgins was after. “I introduced a pre-collection this year, which came out in January; so this [resort] collection happened very fast,” he said after the show. “I wanted the process to reflect that speed, the energy of running towards something, not questioning, not refining too much.”Elsewhere, bold prints mixed color and text in Higgins’s signature style. It happens to be one of the recognizable graphic design styles of the day—the words placed in a seemingly haphazard manner that is of course anything but. It was especially effective on a white tank top with black polka dots, where the dots were actually Higgins’s own thumbprints, with the words “electricity” and “sometimes” sprinkled above them. Also cool: a shell top with expressive swathes of yellow and lilac and the word “crush” boldly taking up space across the shoulders and a poignant black turtleneck sweater with the words “tulips, roses” in red intarsia on the chest. Though many of the words on the clothes seemed to be screaming, there was a melancholy about them. “My work is about poetry and emotion,” the designer said. “This season I wanted to have language that was quite direct and evocative of an image, text that can have maybe multiple meanings.”Other standouts included woven separates. A midi-length nylon jacket and matching trousers (worn by an older model and accessorized with a scalloped lace scarf in a way that felt very natural) and an oversized gray plaid blazer paired with shiny navy narrow trousers are silhouettes that Higgins should continue to explore in future seasons. A romantic floral print was, in fact, an iPhone image of the wallpaper in his rented flat.
15 May 2024
Alix Higgins was thinking about earthquakes and an animal feeling. The visceral, elemental mood of Lars Von Trier films (Dogville, Antichrist) and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” resonated with something pent-up in him after spending many meetings discussing the business end of his emerging label. “I was feeling this sense of creative frustration and wanting to really shake the world with my work,” he said. “Kind of like feeding a creative beast.”In this, his second-ever runway show, he didn’t get bogged down, so to speak, in overt links to muddy, earthy motifs —though models padded barefoot in black feet, that appeared peat-smeared. A scan of a vintage wolf-fur he had when he was working in Paris under Marine Serre was the most literal. Made into prints on halter-tops and skirts in his signature stretch-fabric and transferred onto cotton trenches; his “fur coat” was part of what he called a “refined wildness.” His signature stretched horizon prints returned, and haphazard words on his gender-neutral pieces, some plucked with humor from Internet-and queer-lexicons (“bottom” being also Shakespearean), others more gently poetic, though quietly evolved in monochrome and applied to pleating.Higgins is someone who creates instinctually, not by sketching and creating moodboards. This was how he formed the newness of upcycled polo shirts, hand-manipulated into sculptural evening tops, and drama-filled caped evening gowns that tap the ease of t-shirt. This gives a delicacy to his work, and a lightness of form with subtle meanings. Those clean shapes and subtlety though, come naturally to him— it would be exciting to see what would happen if he let the animal instinct properly loose on them.
19 May 2023
The Internet is much maligned for creating divide and social isolation. That’s not the case for Alix Higgins, a 28-year-old designer who came of age in the early ’00s Tumblr era, a time that seems near on quaintly old now. As a young person, Higgins geeked out on fashion online, watching videos of runway shows and connecting with like-minded obsessives in chat rooms. Those more innocent online days have informed his popular gradient print pieces, which feature words and short phrases reminiscent of the intimate unselfconsciousness that once pervaded personal blogs.Higgins cut his teeth working as Marine Serre’s print assistant in Paris, and he was keen to show off the technical training he gleaned there at his first runway presentation in Sydney. The gradient motifs are elongated digital images of the sunset in varying powdery shades, the result of a happy printing accident. A floral that he used on a dress with a removable peplum was actually a scan of his Paris bedsheets which he reprinted onto a dark background, glitching the pattern to meld the language of the Internet with that of traditional fashion.Combined with words like ‘finally fantasy,’ and ‘God,’ the floral telegraphed delicacy, spirituality, and intimacy. “Everything's disintegrated, fallen off you, and you just have emotion left and poetry left,” he said. Higgins’s fan base responds with devotion to his exploration of identity and invitation to interpret his words. These are clothes for a generation familiar with the solitary feeling of searching for your tribe. Higgins’s tribe is growing and it already includes Grimes and Hunter Schafer.
15 May 2022