For several seasons now, Alexis Mabille has kept his most lavish creative displays for couture week, preferring instead to show an evening capsule collection during the Paris ready-to-wear shows. It’s his way of reminding his younger base that he’s got them covered with his signature silhouettes and shapes, plus a seasonal twist on color and couture-like embellishments. It’s more relaxed than couture, the designer points out, plus these dresses are designed to travel easily wherever his ladies are headed.
“Reworking the essentials” is how Mabille described this lineup of 17 dresses, which can be made long or short—and in other colors and materials, for that matter. This season’s theme was “spring dew,” in sunrise hues of blue, lilac, or shimmering pink that one might find in a Monet painting.
Among Mabille’s signatures—the shirtdress (in taffeta), the bow dress (in silk piqué), a voluminous number inspired by a 19th-century painter’s blouse (also in silk piqué, with Lyon lace)—there was also an evening trench in sparkly silver-blue lamé satin with jeweled buttons that reprised the one shown in his fall couture show at the Lido. That one, in fact, was an iteration of a piece Mabille originally designed for his men’s collection, back when he was doing six shows a year.
Elsewhere, the designer relied on cut to supply movement, for example on a T-shirt dress with a ribbon belt, or a halter dress in forget-me-not blue georgette striped with micro-sequins. The fluted sleeves that look like lace in these photos are in fact cord embroidery on crin, produced by artisans the designer coaxed out of retirement to teach this technique to a new generation. Lace may be one of the trickier materials to treat with a modern touch these days, but Mabille will always be up to the challenge. “I love it,” he said. “I treat it like a second skin, and then add things to it.”
