4 posts tagged "Alexandre Mattiussi"
The ANDAM Race is On
Considering the winner receives a cool 250,000 euros and a two-season mentorship from Italian fashion tycoon Renzo Rosso, the ANDAM Fashion Award is one of the most coveted in the biz. And today, the group announced the seven finalists being considered for the 2013 prize. This year, AMI designer Alexandre Mattiussi, the ever-quirky Olympia Le-Tan (left), Yang Li, Pedro Lourenço, Maison Rabih Kayrouz, Masha Ma, and conceptual couturier Iris van Herpen will be competing for the honor. The winner, whose spoils will also include his or her Spring ’14 collection being sold in Canadian department store Hudson’s Bay Company, 10,000 euros worth of Swarovski Crystals to use on his or her Spring ’14 collection, and support from Fashion GPS over the next two years, will be chosen by a panel of industry insiders—including Colette’s Sarah Andelman, Humberto Leon, Paris Vogue‘s Emmanuelle Alt, and Style.com‘s executive editor Nicole Phelps—in Paris on July 4. Previous winners include Anthony Vaccarello, Giles Deacon, Richard Nicoll, and Gareth Pugh.
Bel Ami
Thirty-two-year-old Alexandre Mattiussi has been on our radar since launching Ami, his line of smart, approachable menswear, two years ago. And tomorrow, the Paris-based designer will celebrate a notable milestone: the opening of his first stand-alone boutique. A homey converted atelier in Paris’ 3rd arrondissement, Ami (which, you’ve no doubt noticed, is a play on the designer’s name as well as the French word for “friend”), fuses design elements Mattiussi holds dear, such as the parquet floors of a Parisian apartment and decor you’d find in a tailor’s workshop.
Mattiussi learned the ropes designing for houses like Dior, Givenchy, and Marc Jacobs, and his own line reflects his luxurious take on easy, masculine dressing. “I really wanted to do clothes that I could wear and afford,” explained the designer during a preview. “Ami is clothing for me and my friends. It’s not intimidating, it’s not too expensive, and it’s definitely not pretentious.”
On the racks (which he also designed) hang thick mustard and burgundy wool-alpaca sweaters, shirts in Japanese poplin, checked overcoats, and wool cashmere suits the designer calls “city but casual.” Like his clothes, the prices are “not intimidating,” too, starting at about $170 and hovering in the mid-three digits (although one of his sheep-lined denim jackets runs about $1,900). Also on offer are accessories like sleek brogues and floral-print baseball caps by the niche brand Larose (the first of several collaborative projects Ami has lined up). “I like the idea of a multifaceted collection,” says Mattiussi. “It’s not too conceptual or intellectual. It’s like soup: If all the ingredients are good and the result is good, we serve it up.”
Ami is located at 109 boulevard Beaumarchais, Paris, +33-9-83-27-65-28.
Amitie In America
Alexandre Mattiussi, the young French menswear designer behind Ami—that is, “friend”—launched his first collection at Barneys New York last night. The casual, affordable line, which now hangs in the retailer’s Co-Op stores, drew an appreciative crowd of editors, bloggers, and the occasional actor. (That’d be Bryan Greenberg, who was overheard to recall that the fifth-floor surroundings looked familiar…because his character on How to Make It In America had been fired from them on the show’s first season.)
Barneys is fêting its new acquisition with the pomp you’d accord to a new chum, and so before it sends Mattiussi out on a national tour—”it’s my Lady Gaga tour!” he exclaimed—it threw him a cozy dinner at Le Bilboquet on the Upper East Side. Old friends and new came to celebrate, including Barneys’ Mark Lee, Dennis Freedman, and Amanda Brooks, Matt Kliegman and Carlos Quirarte, designer couple Alexander Olch and Jennifer Murray, and Joseph Altuzarra, who’d known Mattiussi ever since the two worked at Givenchy years ago. (“He’s exactly the same,” Altuzarra reported.) The designer’s next stops: Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A., all for the first time. Before that? A surprise birthday cake, courtesy of his new pals. Five days ago, l’ami turned 31.