ALAINPAUL SS27
A dancer leaves the stage and keeps the movement. ALAINPAUL's Spring Summer 2027 collection picks up the performer after the curtain falls and follows them into the night, where the strict choreography of the institution meets the instinct of the dancefloor. Alain Paul points to Hofesh Shechter, (LA)HORDE and Sharon Eyal, three choreographers who draw on the energy of nightlife. Two wardrobes trade pieces here, and each leaves its mark on the other.
The looks read as outfits put together in the dressing room minutes after a show. Rehearsal tights wrap the torso as a top over tailored stirrup trousers, and a dress folds down at the waist to become a skirt. The tailoring pushes the house's forward shoulder further, with an elastic panel at the back of jackets and coats pulling against the front to sharpen the waist. A reversed-peak lapel joins the vocabulary, while an oversized wool skirt with several button positions and an internal elastic lets the wearer decide where the waist lands.
Sportswear dresses up for evening. Drawcords, pullers and stoppers travel from the nylon tracksuit onto pencil skirts and dresses, and women's track jackets swell into balloon sleeves. Fabrics swap identities: dry, transparent silk imitates nylon, and light nylon falls like silk. Mousseline gowns with internal tunnels and cords hand the drape to the wearer, who can gather or release the fabric to reshape the silhouette. A crushed pink satin slip dress carries a smudged print taken from the notes and signatures dancers write on worn pointe shoes.
Alain Paul's 2025 costume work for the Paris Opera with Imre and Marne Van Opstal taught him that a stage costume is built for the audience's eye. That lesson returns as trompe-l'œil: a shirt reduced to its front panel, a cardigan cut back to its visible surface, an ornamental plastron worn as jewellery. Jacquards, épaulettes, pannier volumes and theatrical brooches bring history into contemporary dress. Denim is distressed, bleached and foiled piece by piece, so every figure in the group keeps a distinct identity. The dancer's leather knee pad turns into an accessory, worn on the leg or carried as a bag, and a tailored sleeve ties into a top or a cummerbund. In footwear, ballerinas, one of them on a stiletto, join a derby warped along its side, an echo of the imprint years of pointe work leave on the foot.
Toward the finale the language of the stage turns abstract. A tutu, stripped to its structure, grows into a gown of a thousand individually applied ruffles held in place by an internal corset. The closing look holds its gesture in metal-thread silk organza, almost weightless, anchored by a single grosgrain band across the chest.
The show itself became a performance. A cast of dancers, Paris Opera principal Germain Louvet among them, began as separate bodies and gradually gathered into one group, moving toward a shared physical language. Byredo Animalique scented the room.
Photography Timothy Joseph Boue
Words by Donald Gjoka
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