Auralee (Q3791)
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Auralee is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Auralee |
Auralee is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The setting for this Auralee show was none other than the Hôtel des Maisons, the 18th-century hôtel particulier that once served as Karl Lagerfeld’s primary residence a stone’s throw away from the Seine in Paris’s Left Bank. But it wasn’t the grandiosity of its interiors that attracted designer Ryota Iwai—it was its gardens.Iwai was chasing a particular feeling for spring. For fall he was after evoking the ennui of the later hours of the day, that time between work and lifeafterwork. This season he wanted to elicit the solace of a city park. The show was meant to be hosted outside, but a rainy morning shooed the benches back indoors. (The forecast predicts a rainy week, so this might not be the last time you hear this.) The downpour never came, and so the floor-to-ceiling doors were swung open to let the breeze in.The designer explained through a translator that his fascination with parks comes from how people from all walks of life gather in them. There are readers seeking a quiet space, commuters with briefcases and headphones (wired ones in the Auralee world, no Bluetooth), intellectual newspaper readers, and nonchalant passersby. The common thread is that they’re all out there looking forsomething.Iwai is adept at building these narratives into his collections, which paint a picture of an idyllic yet simple and relatable life. It’s our day-to-day reality, only a little chicer, more elegant, and designed with more intention. This season that came across in the high-waist chinos and cinched coats for women and the casual layering of bomber jackets over suits or sweaters draped on top of breezy shirting for men. It was also apparent in the way Iwai’s tailoring clung to the body in all the right places, while his shirting and knitwear seemed to repel it with generous proportions.Iwai famously produces all of his fabrics; it’s the recurrent factoid that comes up in Paris when anyone discusses his collections. Here, he said his challenge was to make the most unexpected of fibers into summer fabrics. He succeeded with a soft, washable cashmere knitted into sweaters and an almost sheer lightweight wool shirting. A delicious cashmere moleskin was cut into spring coats and worn over cotton twill fashioned into hefty but surprisingly light chinos and preppy zip-up jackets. It would be too easy to dismiss Auralee as simply good styling.
The nuances of how these clothes are worn and presented on the runway are undoubtedly part of the label’s charm, but it’s the consideration with which they’re made that makes them special.
18 June 2024
That the word “clothes” has become a buzzword, with designers emphasizing newfound commitments to makingjust really good clothes,is somewhat puzzling. Shouldn’t this have always been the point? Either way, at the Japanese label Auralee, “good clothes” have been a guiding principle from the start. Designer Ryota Iwai has built a devoted fan base for quality separates made in custom, meticulously considered fabrics, along with a highly sought after New Balance sneakers collaboration.The Japanese brand launched for the spring 2015 in Tokyo, and Iwai has been showing his collections on the calendar in Paris since January of 2019, but this is the first time he’s putting his clothes on the runway. Auralee is on the rise.Fall found Iwai ruminating on the quotidian, more specifically the hours in the evening when one is transitioning between working into simply living. “It’s that break after the first half of the day and the end of the day,” explained Iwai. This, the way the designer sees it, is a time of brief anticipation. You’re going home from work, you’re about to have dinner with your friends, meet up with your family, run a couple of errands. Your clothes are lived-in, the properness and formality of the morning washed away by daily activity.While this collection captures that idea literally in a range of playful styling tricks—dry cleaning hangs over forearms, sweaters and coats peek out of overstuffed briefcases, gloves are held or stuffed in pockets rather than worn—it’s in the nuances of the materiality and cut in Iwai’s clothes where the ease of the end of day takes is conveyed best. There’s a ’90s feel to Iwai’s tailoring, but its proportions are distinctly contemporary: Coats are streamlined and have extra long sleeves and hems, trousers pool over sneakers, and structured shoulder jackets appear hefty but are lightweight to touch. Most inviting is Iwai’s knitwear, made to fit amply around the body, creating wrinkles and creases.Iwai takes pride in the fact that Auralee produces its own fabrics, sourcing everything from Mongolian cashmere to Peruvian alpaca and working with local mills to produce fabrics to his specifications. The star of the show is a plush alpaca wool used for the puffers, though the fuzzy mohair column gowns and spongy bonded Melton are not far behind.
Iwai is an excellent colorist—evidenced here by the use of an equal parts bright and pale honeydew melon hue as if it were a neutral—and that adds further texture to a collection of already very covetable clothes.Neckties play a supporting but consequential role here. They nod at the ordinary and the corporate, which have been an interest in fashion of late (see: this season’s Prada). Designers seem to be almost exclusively interested in showing collections that are eitherrealor completely fantastical. Iwai’s work falls into the former category. But what happens to the middle ground?
16 January 2024