BACKSTAGE WITH ALAIN PAUL FALL/WINTER 2025

The roles we perform in life are illustrated in the ways we dress. From formal to casual – from on-duty to off-duty – our wardrobe curations reflect the dualities conditional to modern life. For Fall-Winter 2025, Alain Paul mirrors this mentality in the circumstances of the performer central to his practice. Through explorations of the dancer’s dress codes on-stage and off-stage – both inescapably linked to the cra and its physicality – the two states of dress are expressed in tensions between the formal and theatrical versus the casual and the intimate. The dualities are conveyed in gestural and emotional silhouettes founded in androgynous dialogues between form and freedom.

A type of performance in its own right, the impact of wearing formalwear is challenged in tailoring stripped of its components of formality – lapels, collars, pockets – and paired with garments contradictory in nature. Suits and coats are crafted from traceable wools and cashmeres or repurposed from deadstock luxury wools. Capturing a dancer’s interplay between performance and reality, padded nylon outerwear and sculptural basculé-shaped tops, dresses and skirts in heavy silk draw on the relationship between movement and stillness, reflecting the way a performer moves and feels in the real world.

CREDITS:

photography ALEXANDRE BANGOURA