With his “Mirror, Mirror” collection, Alexis Mabille celebrated the myriad possibilities offered to women thanks to clothes and makeup, allowing them to switch personalities at will. “It’s a chance for a woman, you have such a huge palette you can play with, you can be an actress if you want, or you can just be you and sensitive,” he said backstage after his show. “The idea was to work on intimacy, when you speak to yourself every morning, and draw parallels with couture, shaping the body, using colors, lines to match a personality, and it’s the same with makeup,” he said.
Deviating from his habitual palette of bright jewel tones, his register was a swatch of ivory, ballet pink, beige, moiré bronze and brown, with touches of black and red, and plenty of shimmer.
In the most literal designs, glittering scarlet lips were embroidered across the front of a high-necked sheath dress. A second jersey number featured a single eye and eyebrow that shadowed the shape of its asymmetric neckline.
He shaped crêpe and satin with his habitual ease to form tuxedo dresses with elaborate collar details or voluminous layers like sculptures with the female body their framework. Other looks had ballooning puff sleeves in graduated taffeta or delicate incrustations of lace.
The restrained color palette left plenty of room to go to town with embellishments, be they all-over tone-on-tone embroideries, the sequins on a catsuit, ostrich feathers adorning a voluminous négligée, or the giant bow details that are Mabille’s signature, but had been less present in his most recent outings.
