24-year-old Parisian designer Alphonse Maitrepierre is fashion’s new wunderkind

0
872

The former assistant of Jean Paul Gaultier-cum-consultant for Chanel is making a splash with his own namesake label.

“I knew that I wanted to work in fashion when I was 14 years old,” explains Alphonse Maitrepierre over the phone to Vogue, revealing a preternatural instinct the Paris-based designer has transformed into reality just a decade later.

Shortly after completing his studies at the prestigious La Cambre in Brussels, Maitrepierre began assisting Jean Paul Gaultier on his haute couture collections. There, working intimately with the storied French designer (Maitrepierre’s internship quickly transpired into an assistant position), the role precipitated a stream of opportunities including work as a stylist for Swedish brand Acne Studios and a consultancy gig for iconic heritage house Chanel.

At 24, Maitrepierre helms his own eponymous label from his studio in Montmartre, which he launched in 2018. As he readies to show his new collection for spring/summer ’20/’21 during Paris Fashion Week in September, the nascent designer chatted to Vogue about finding his freedom under Gaultier’s leadership, the value of collaboration, and nurturing a visual universe that is entirely one’s own.

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

“He’s a very hard worker,” Maitrepierre recalls of Gaultier. “To look at how this icon managed his time and his creative process; it was very instructive for me. [He] taught me how to just let go and feel it… [He] liberated me.” This freedom to express oneself without limits is a recurrent tenet in Maitrepierre’s overall approach to design. A formative lesson learned early on in his career, he continues to parlay Gaultier’s teachings into future projects, whether working in the industry or designing costumes for drama/thriller Knife+Heart (2018) directed by Yann Gonzales and starring Vanessa Paradis.

Reflecting on the parallels between film and fashion, he illuminates, “Gaultier really gave me something very creative and the director of the movie [worked] in the same way… There are many monsters; it’s in a queer world; there is murder. It was a crazy movie and I could directly put my experience with Jean Paul Gaultier in the film.”

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

Cinema, for Maitrepierre, facilitates designers to stretch their imaginations while finessing a signature at the same time, even if only working as a small cog in a much larger wheel. Regularly looking to film to inspire his own collections, he summarises the experience working on Knife+Heart: “It’s crazy to do it when there is a very big universe,” he says, “[it is] a way to express ourselves as designers, and to put our stone on the wall of the DNA of the movie.”

This ability to imprint a moment in time (cinematic or otherwise) is a muscle Maitrepierre is exercising in his capacity as consultant to Chanel as well. “[The consultancy involves] giving advice on the DNA; on the digital; it touches everything—it’s discussions on our expectations,” he explains. “It can be on the Instagram of Chanel, on the choice of jewellery, the packaging or the make up… It showed me the insides of very big brands and how we can create the DNA of a brand, actualise it—make something new and more fresh—but keep its soul.”

Enter Maitrepierre’s bold, young offering under his own name that melds futurism with nostalgia and technology with humour to comment on the social mores of our time (his spring/summer ‘18/’19 collection, which featured model Adèle Farine, deformed her face in reference to society’s need to modify and filter ourselves on social media). After commissions began rolling in—“I started to have orders for my bags; the stylists started asking me about my clothes”—Maitrepierre founded his namesake brand organically. 

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

The line sits “between prêt-à-porter and couture,” the designer explains, cautious to limit the clothing to either a commercial or luxury market. Each collection is intended, not unlike a film, to introduce “another story, another character” to the Maitrepierre world, which is filled with voluminous shapes, gender-defying silhouettes and textural stimuli.

The clothing evokes Maitrepierre’s knack for deconstruction, which the designer indulges in Photoshop, where he plays around with collage. Collaboration is king: Maitrepierre works with leather makers, knitwear specialists, print makers and jewellery designers to produce the clothing and accessories, assembling a team to execute each collection together. “My whole brand is collaboration; for me it is most important, and that is really a part of my DNA,” he explains.

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

Image credit: Marthe Sobczak

It’s a modern approach that reflects the industry’s impetus to become more inclusive and diverse—an agenda that is front of mind for Maitrepierre and that, exemplified in his gender-fluid clothing, differentiates him from the rest. “I am just proposing a DNA and a universe,” he confesses. “Maybe the future of fashion is when we as designers are not too injunctive: ‘you have to dress like this! You have to put this and this together!’ No. I’m not in [the wearer’s] body,” Maitrepierre explains—as if this should be obvious to all designers, although it often isn’t.

“That’s the real freedom for me now in fashion,” he reflects, “to give the key for people to express themselves and do what they want. Then, if they want some advice, of course I am here.”

Source