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 life after work. 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 in doors (the forecast predicts a rainy week, so this might not be the first 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 the way that 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 for something.
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 waisted 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.
