Matthew Williams

JZJohanna Zwirner
MWMatthew Williams

Matthew Williams has been a fixture of the fashion world for decades, emerging initially through costume design and streetwear before creating his own brand, 1017 Alyx 9SM, in 2015. In 2020, Williams accepted the position of creative director at Givenchy, a fashion house whose designs, ethos, and legacy he had long admired. Williams has always had a magpie-minded bent in his interests, beginning with the streetwear of his early career before moving to the collectives he participated in with musicians and creatives, all while maintaining longstanding collaborations with other major companies. He has explored photography and sculpture; partnered on collections with such visual artists as Mark Flood and Josh Smith; and encouraged a new wave of technological innovations that continue to push luxury in more sustainable directions.

Williams’ positivity, energy, and enthusiasm are infectious—speaking with him even for a little while, one begins to see how new worlds are constantly expanding and morphing around him, and how a single fiber or pattern can kick off an obsession. From sleeping on the floor of an L.A. design studio to moving to Paris for Givenchy, he has always recognized the importance of collaboration and building a consistent team, a base from which to catapult fashion into new thought systems. It was my pleasure to speak with Williams via Zoom about his path in the fashion industry, his inspirations and creative process, and his take on helming a legacy house. This interview took place in March 2023.

JZJohanna Zwirner
MWMatthew Williams

I was reading about how you first came into contact with design and fashion through your football coach and a friend of his, when you were 19 years old.

They were both my football coaches. One of them had a brand making denim. So, I started interning for him during a summer when I was attending the University of California, Santa Barbara. And I just fell in love with making clothing. I didn’t realize it could be a job until that moment.

And there hadn’t really been any consideration of fashion as a career for you before then?

No, not at all. I had never really even thought about how clothing was made prior to that moment. Also, most of my interactions with clothing at that time were with sportswear. The only clothing I thought about was for soccer, or basketball, Nike apparel, or skateboarding, which was still super cool. But then when I started working for Keith Richardson in LA, he was making expensive denim and working with fabrics from Japan. It changed my understanding of fashion, seeing the process of how things are made from raw materials. It made me look at clothing differently. It showed me that brands can be these small operations run by a couple of people instead of what I understood fashion to be, ran by these massive companies that sponsor dressing the Olympians—both levels of clothing can exist. No matter the scale it could be intimate and have a relationship with culture and music and be a place of discovery for yourself and others.

And you were literally living in his studio at one point, right, for the summer?

Yeah, it was on Seventh and Santa Fe in Downtown, Los Angeles. I was cutting samples and patterns, then would put everything in my car and drive around East L.A. and get samples made. I wasn’t designing at that point. It was more about learning, apprenticing, and understanding the necessary steps to make garments. And I fell in love with it.

What was the most meaningful part about that learning process for you?

I’ve always been somebody that just really threw myself into things that I was passionate about. I was just so compelled to learn about everything. The fact that there was this whole element of fashion that was connected with photography and music and nightlife at that time—I started to identify with the people that I was engaging with around fashion. Before that, when I was in college or playing sports, I’d be more of an outlier. I just never felt a part of the group before that, so that felt really good, like, "Oh, I found my people," you know?

All of a sudden, you’re in this world where everybody’s excited about some of the same things.

I am from such a small town, so that job also encompassed growing up by being in a huge city like L.A.

It’s also probably quite hard to put a finger on the fashion pulse because there are so many different influences. How’d you find your way in terms of that sense of scale?

It was a super special moment because there was no social media. We had MySpace. That was what my crew was using, and MySpace at that time was actually really California-centric. It hadn’t really made it across the US at that point. The whole fashion world—I don’t know how to explain it. It felt like L.A. but it wasn’t L.A., in a cheesy L.A. way [Laughter]. Stores in Japan stocked the brand I was working for, Corpus, and we would go to New York a lot. And we had friends that were working on brands in the Lower East Side. There was a lot of synergy between all these kinds of young menswear labels, because also at that time, menswear was just beginning to be spoken about in the fashion vernacular—Hedi Slimane was doing Dior Homme, and that was becoming really big. And Raf Simons was doing his brand. It was the early 2000s, you know? Before that, it was really always about women’s fashion, and people didn’t really talk about menswear. There was another group in New York called Nom de Guerre that had a shop that was underneath the Swatch store on Broadway and Bleecker that carried brands from Japan and other menswear designers. It was kind of like the first streetwear-fashion-culture brand that I had ever seen, where they put out really amazing albums that had jazz on them, and had pictures of Miles Davis as graphics, or Kurt Cobain. And it was cultural. That was the segment that we were living in. In L.A. at that time, social media was just becoming a thing. There weren’t many cameras on peoples’ cell phones, it was the era of the Blackberry. People would go out and let loose at clubs. They didn’t really care about being photographed or seen. There was this merge in New York and L.A. where there would be a famous actor or musician or a really cool artist present, but the music that the DJ was playing wasn’t on the radio. You’d be compelled to go to the nightclub again to hear that song that wasn’t out yet. And there was more energy around it, people dressed up to go out. The club was the place where you would see interesting fashion, because other than that, you would only see it fashion magazines. It was kind of all feeding itself. And then when you traveled, each city would have a visibly different scene. It’s not the same today.

That’s Instagram, ultimately. I also wanted to talk about Been Trill, speaking of this intersection of music and fashion, and the origins of that collective. Do you see that kind of group or collective reflected at all in the last few years? Or has the globalization of fashion and music limited that capacity a bit?

Been Trill was just a group of friends. We were traveling together and wanted to hear the music that we wanted to listen to when we went out at night. So, we learned how to DJ just to play and experience that music. The whole fashion part of it was something that was just a byproduct of us all wanting to wear a uniform when we were doing gigs together. It wasn’t precious, it was very immediate, and so was the music that we were playing. It became less and less precious, like SoundCloud. We played artists that get on the mic, it didn’t matter where the beat came from, it’s stream-of-consciousness songs, not even mixed, we just put it out. It was about this idea of putting things out and just seeing how the world interacts with them. That was really formative moment for music. Prior to that, there would be artists I would work with, they’d spend a year, two years on an album, in this special studio, and everything was “Man, we have to wait two months for this guy who’s going to mix the album to be available.” And that’s one way of doing it. Been Trill kind of encapsulated the beginning of that movement, and the fashion of it was a reflection of that.

What’s interesting is the fashion for it came out of a collective, whereas I think for a lot of these houses, it sometimes becomes an individual sport now where you have each designer’s singular vision leading these big houses. Do you prioritize collaboration?

Yeah, collaboration is important. From the suppliers that you produce the piece with, photographers who shoot campaign imagery, and the architects we build stores with. It’s always a collaboration, from start to finish.

I learned that you made a point to study photography at one point. Is it something that’s important to you or more about art direction in general?

I wanted to understand how to shoot, because when I had visions of starting my own brand, I didn’t want to have to rely on anybody to create all of the content for it. I moved to London, and I worked with Nick Knight, and learned how to create imagery from apprenticing with him. And then for the first three and a half, four years of Alyx, I would shoot everything. And before Alyx, I would do all of the editorials, mostly making photographs for pleasure; usually for an independent magazine, taking a portrait of someone I was interested in photographing. I started shooting less and less as the demand grew and I spent more time designing clothes, like with Nike and Moncler and all the collections of Alyx. I wasn’t able to make time for it as much as I’d like to. But then this year, I had really been missing it, and I started shooting again recently, so I shot the last men’s campaign for Givenchy—I shot the musician Alkaline. I’ve been shooting more—I did another portrait project, where I’ve just been photographing people that have been coming to the studio; I took pictures of Montel Fish recently. I’m much more of a portrait photographer. It’s about capturing the person that’s in front of me. And the clothes are kind of just a byproduct.

Is there a publication or magazine whose photography you really admire at the moment? Do you typically gravitate more towards portraiture as a result of your own work?

I do. The pictures that I’ve always been a huge fan of are by people like Bruce Weber, and I love Sam Haskins, a photographer of the 1970s. I obviously love Hedi’s [Slimane] photography so much. His portraiture is really cool and is based in music and people that he just discovers and casts. But then obviously, people like Wolfgang Tillmans, he has such a variety of images, but they’re so emotional and beautiful. He’s definitely one of my favorite photographers.

They’re singular moments. It doesn’t ever feel staged, which is amazing.

Sometimes I am envious of artists—they just need themselves to produce work. With fashion, sometimes it’s such a machine to make something. It’s so logistical. Maybe one day, I’ll just be able to think something, and it gets made [Laughs.]

I think there’s space for that in the metaverse. [Laughs.] You can design and it can be a solo enterprise. We’ve talked a little bit about your work with musicians, and specific projects that you’ve done with music, which I know has always been an exchange that you love in your career. Is that something that you’ve been doing recently? Have you been able to keep that up along with Givenchy and your collaborations? Are you still producing on artists’ work?

I always have time to work with musicians. At the moment, I’m working on curating an album for Alyx of a bunch of young artists I’m inspired by. I’m interested in working with music by curating young artists and giving them a platform for their work to be heard through my community. I commission music for all of the runway shows, like the last men’s show for Givenchy, I worked with Bakar. When you came to [the Spring 2022 show in] Paris, we’d made an original score, and in the upcoming women’s show, I’m working with this really cool group from Bristol in England called Overmono. They make really amazing techno. There are always ways that I’m working with music, and that’s what I love about fashion, how you get to touch all these different disciplines through it, which is really exciting.

How does the choreography of the shows emerge for you?

Yeah, a lot of it comes through the space. And I can’t take all the credit, I work with people who I discussed those concepts with. So those first few shows at Givenchy it was really about having the choreography on the runway be unique or having it feel really full, having all these different models crossing in different ways and viewing the collection from different angles. It felt like a new step for me because in the past, I’ve never been able to explore those ideas in my shows. And now in my recent shows I’ve come back to something much more pared back, where it’s just in a plain white setting with the models walking in a straight line, and it really is just about the clothes and the music. And it’s interesting to come full circle: there’s a reason why gallery shows just have the work shown on a white background, and we moved away from the salon-style presentations. It’s a good way to look at work.

Completely. Do you find it a little bit distracting when the fashion show is being held in a church or something like that, where the surroundings are so bold?

We’re allowed to change our tastes as we go on, we’re allowed to have different periods of our work. And that’s what’s so beautiful about fashion for me, it’s always a reflection of what it means to live today, you know? I’m reflecting what I’m seeing and feeling; it’s a reaction to the world around me or the industry. What naturally comes out is something that feels right for right now. And that’s why I think you always have to compare things in the context in which they were presented.

I want to go from the wide angle to something quite specific, which is something that I think a lot of people are obsessed with. I wanted to talk about the Alyx hardware closure, which is this incredibly iconic piece inspired by a rollercoaster safety buckle. I know you’ve spoken about how you manufacture it in one specific factory in Austria that makes car parts. Thinking about it now, how do you feel about that feature of the closure and the authenticity of its production? How has it followed you or had echoes later on?

It came from just a feeling, you know? It’s something I saw in California. And it represented, for Californians, something like Magic Mountain or a theme park that might be a place you might come of age, become a teenager and have your first kiss, or get drunk for the first time, or have this really memorable night with your friends. It represents the feeling when you finally you go home, and you can’t go to sleep at night. It had that kind of radiance about it, and then paired with the idea of it being used for clothing, which is something that it wasn’t meant for, made sense to me. You can naturally see that as a viewer. I mean, now there’ve been lots of people who have done variations of it since we did it, but at the beginning, it really looked unlike other kinds of closures in that way. And then the last thing was that it just felt so satisfying to open and close. That had to do with—literally they make it with steel that comes from Austria, from the Alps, and it has a specific weight to it, so there’s the satisfaction of how it opens and closes. I think you feel that. And maybe, you know, maybe that’s what people identify with. But again, for the first year and a half, it didn’t sell at all, like nobody cared, it just slowly caught on. But for me, it was a way of having our brand be recognized and having an identifiable logo without it being us writing the word Alyx.

Right. Actually, I wanted to ask you about that as well. I’m always curious to know how designers think about the question of the logo. There’s logomania, you can go all the way there, you can go completely pared back. Do you feel with Alyx, especially—because I think Givenchy is so specific and already kind of has that built in recognition—but with Alyx, was that idea of the logo something that you were actively avoiding? Or just figuring out how to do it your own way?

I’ve thought about it a lot. At the beginning it felt so unfamiliar to be putting the logo so forward-facing on the clothing. And then I had friends I was working with who were saying, “It doesn’t feel like that for other people, they just want to wear the logo.” You know, they don’t think about it like that. And then I slowly began to commit more and more to it. I think it was about five or six years in, and I did a whole branding project with these art directors, OK-RM, who are really amazing, and we went much more in detail. There’s a manifesto about Alyx that we also published, and these really detailed brand guidelines too, with spacing for fonts. We worked with a typographer to develop a unique font for Alyx, and even extra glyphs that we can use for symbols, et cetera. So it was a very, very in-depth branding process that took about a year and a half, that we still use today. And that was really interesting and fun to do, because it created rules that really made sense, like where you would place branding and logo in a way that always felt right. And to take it back a second: what I do believe about logos and branding is that it’s actually just about repetition and time. And then what you do becomes the feeling and the meaning of the logo. You know, it’s almost like what it’s named as is far less important than what it represents.

Especially if you’re thinking about that Alyx closure as this moment of your childhood that is very personal to you, that kind of comes out in other ways in other garments. That moment then becomes what resonates with people over time, which is so special.

Yeah, it’ll be 10 years next year for the brand. I find myself just like really loving—we have a circle A logo, and I’ve just started to love our logo so much again now.

I’m curious too, with the Givenchy padlock hardware—first of all, where are those manufactured?

Those are manufactured with different suppliers, whether it’s for jewelry or for bags or for shoes, they all come from different people, but it’s inspired by the love locks in Paris. And now we’ve done lots of different types of locks.

And have you enjoyed seeing that design develop, that act of imagination and rethinking iconic shapes that comes into play?

I think that was one element of it, but then I love just creating forms. I really enjoyed doing sculpture when I was studying art, and I think I still get a lot of pleasure out of making forms, whether that’s out of metal, or wood, or ceramic, or even 3D in terms of the bag or a shoe as form. Those materials—seeing what they can do and finding tension between materials that normally would be at odds with one another. I think that’s where there’s really interesting interplay and energy in my work, and that’s what I always head towards. And at Givenchy, I have such access to materials and know how to really explore those things.

I imagine it’s probably whatever you can dream up, you can create in some way. And I know we mentioned earlier the Moncler collaboration, and definitely the Nike collaboration, which is probably even more personal to you as somebody who was growing up skating and playing soccer, so I wonder: what are some of the most joyful moments of those collaborations, and also, what is difficult about those collaborations? Are there moments where it’s difficult to maintain your own individual voice when there’s such a monumental brand transposed over it or with it?

Yeah, I’ve been really fortunate in the fact that with the large brands that I’ve worked for, I’ve had really great relationships with the CEOs and the leadership, down to the design teams and the communication teams, and they’ve rarely been one-off collaborations. They’ve mostly all been collaborations that have existed for many years, four or five at the least. And it almost becomes these mini collections within those larger brands. So you start to feel really at home within those big companies, and a lot of times, one of the great reasons I loved all of those collaborations is that there’s so much to learn when you’re able to witness another company operate. I’ve been able to learn about product that I normally would never have been able to make at Alyx, or marketing or retail and all these different things that happen when you’re working with other companies. So for me, the pros, and the positive experience of it, all far outweighs any negative experience. I’m trying to think about what’s been challenging about it—maybe sometimes that enough people can’t actually buy the collaborations. That’s what happened on this last Moncler one, like I couldn’t even get all the jackets that I wanted to get from the collection because they all sold out [Laughs.] They’ve all been very enjoyable and fun for the most part.

It sort of becomes an expansion of your family or your community with these brands.

Exactly. Especially because it’s consistent over many years. You know, it’s not for the hype, and most of the collections, from shoes to outerwear to jewelry to bags, it’s a full world that’s created within those other brands.

It’s not just one line or one kind of product. You sent me this amazing rebranding manifesto that you mentioned earlier, and you have this one line that I loved: “Alyx is a collective proposition.” That sentiment seems really important and special. Can you talk a little bit about how you arrived at that statement and what it means to the brand as you continue to conceive of these seasons?

Yeah, we talked about collaboration and input. You know, the brand isn’t named after me, it’s named after my daughter, Alyx. And that allows for input from other creatives and other people to build upon that foundation. It’s a space where people contribute, whether that’s the musicians who are adding to this album we’re putting out, or the architects who helped build our showroom, or my friend who comes over from Japan and does the ikebana flower arrangements for the showroom. It is an ecosystem that perpetuates itself and is inclusive in the most non-cheesy way possible [Laughs.]

I love that idea. Because I think people see these brands, and they think about a very monolithic reality of one single designer. And that’s what I’ve always loved talking to you about—you refuse to be one thing; you’ve always wanted to bring other threads in and allow them to be in conversation with one another.

Yeah, that contamination from outside sources: it’s what leads to new ideas, like working with Josh Smith on the Givenchy collection. I would have never experimented with so much color, or some of his motifs, but it just led me in a really great direction, and then also having this other mind to have a dialogue with was so refreshing, and it just makes it exciting and it never gets boring.

I remember that moment of walking through the showroom and seeing all these amazing objects that combined your design with his prints and his colors and his palette, which is so off the wall and amazing. Would you think about doing another artist collaboration like that? Or have you?

I’m so interested in doing more of those. We did one for Alyx last season with Mark Flood, which was really cool. He’s like 72 years old and has had an amazing career. I’m still in discussions with other estates and artists. It’s one of those things where I never want it to feel like we’re just licensing an artwork and slapping it on a piece of clothing; I want it to feel really well thought out and respectful of the artists and their career and work, presenting something new to the table that makes sense for everyone. So that takes time.

I can imagine that’s quite tricky with an estate as well. If you’re dealing with an artist who’s not around anymore, it’s not the same dialogue or meeting of the minds that maybe it was with you and Josh. I remember watching you guys talk, it was so fun and exciting—two really creative, smart people whose minds are melding.

We’re still talking. I was actually just reading Darkness Moves, by Henri Michaux. Because Josh was sending me poems from this book recently. So I bought it, and I was reading this before you called, texting him some of the poems that I was reading. It’s a year or two later, and I still have this amazing creative dialogue with Josh, we’re constantly just sharing and talking and supporting each other and venting and it’s super special.

I think the dream of those collaborations is that it becomes its own relationship afterwards hopefully. I want to switch gears a bit and get into the more technical side of your design and this idea of the TK-360 shoe, making something that is this single fiber. Are there other tech innovations or fibers that you’re excited about right now? Is it a constant process of thinking about how you can innovate on that and create sustainable products?

Yeah, that was really special, because it was so much about an idea, and then having it be the right timing and have the right resources for something like that to be implemented. At Givenchy, we combined know-how from multiple suppliers and created a new supply chain. It was a merge of multiple kinds of knowledge to be able to create a new way of making shoes that had never been done before. And everyone was motivated by the idea. So everybody collaborated together from all the companies to really make it work. And it was no small feat at all. I mean, you can have these ideas, and they just sit on a piece of paper forever, but then for it to be realized is so, so cool. And for a product like that, where it is so technical, and maybe normally it would be made by a sportswear company, I’m not sure it would have ever gotten off the ground, because it doesn’t improve sport in some way.

It’s not performance-enhancing, necessarily.

Exactly, exactly. So with a fashion company, that’s what’s so beautiful sometimes is, we can explore how material is used without it having some purpose for sport. And I think there’s a whole world of this idea of technical craftsmanship, and a new modern luxury through some of these fibers and treatments and technical innovations that can be explored. And we can have a dialogue with traditional craftsmanship. That’s what I’m doing a lot at Givenchy is, it’ll be something like the TK-360 but with embroidery done in the atelier in silks, but then mixed with denim from Japan and garment dyeing, and there becomes, like I said before, a tension between materials that normally are never sitting next to each other. And the TK-360 was something that I was fortunate enough to be able to have the support to explore and go towards. But that being said, there always is a little material on my desk or a little swatch or a concept that I’ve seen during my research where I ask, can this be applied to this product? There’s just a whole bucket list—when it’s the right moment, and I’m in the right setting, and ask, "What about that idea?"

The magic happens. I like the idea that you can make the shoe from this rubber and then if it eventually wears down, it’s okay, you just grind it again. You can kind of continue the process. And same with this idea of these shoe sole repair trucks, where it’s not about buying a new pair of shoes, you know, you can actually fix what you have. Which also in some ways marries with the idea of custom tailoring, how these pathways of knowledge and craftmanship speak to each other.

Exactly. It’s celebrating the life of something like a pair of raw jeans that you break in. I mean, so much exists around the idea of value that a person places on something, and I think there can be storytelling and a shift in how people view products, that something lived-in or repaired in a beautiful way is itself super beautiful. I mean, that’s what I use on the denim at Givenchy, this boro technique, which is from kimono repair. And in Japan, you know, it’s all about that beauty. I was just looking at this vase. I don’t know how many times this thing’s been broken. I think it’s from the year 800 or 1000 CE, it’s so old. But it’s just been smashed and repaired, you know, it’s a beautiful part of that culture: it’s ingrained that the cracks have value. There’s also this concept of inspiring people with these other jobs of craft, whether that be a shoe cobbler, or a person that cuts couture, or does embroidery. A lot of this craftsmanship is dying. This current generation and the younger generations need to be inspired to explore and learn these crafts. To be honest, I think some of it’s sad, when things go away and some of this know-how fades. But maybe it’s also just part of natural selection in the way of the methods that should remain and be in the ethos. I don’t know, I have been of two minds about it. Because you never want to live in the past, where it’s, "Oh, this way of doing things is better." There are also all these new ways of doing things and creating product that are exciting. So it’s always a balance.

It’s about finding that equanimity. You mentioned the people who cut couture and who make couture—will you talk a bit about the history of couture at Givenchy and where it is now?

Givenchy has been around for over 70 years now, and couture was implemented early on at the house. And for myself, I haven’t shown couture in a runway setting yet. But I worked with the couture ateliers on the looks for the ready-to-wear shows. And then for events like the Met Gala, and stage clothes for musicians, and also just individual couture clients. So I get to work with them in those settings.

Do you enjoy designing couture, is there a place in your heart for that? Or do you prefer really sticking to the ready-to-wear collections, given couture’s specificity?

I love it all. Actually, the couture really speaks to the beginning of my career when I was working in costume design in LA, and I was working with these costume makers, where it was a dress for one artist for the stage, one moment in time, it was made for that person and didn’t have to be reproduced. And it was so creatively freeing to work in that way, where it didn’t have to be commercialized. I fell in love with making clothes like that, and I think couture in so many ways, the showing of it has that freedom which I really like, and then the know-how of the people who work in the atelier, it’s just incredible. You can just do really amazing things—in the first four looks of the men’s show, you can’t really see it from photos, but for instance, the pant only has one seam, right? On the inside leg, and that means it could never be altered, it has to be made for that person. All the bar tacks are hand stitched. So when you look closely, they have this slight imperfection and soul. The way the seams are pressed, the way the interior of the jacket and shoulder pads are constructed, there’s many details that are just for the wearer, which I think is something that’s always important in luxury. Especially things like when you buy fine jewelry, you might have diamonds that are hidden and are only for the wearer. There’s that same kind of concept that there are these ideas within the clothing that look really simple to the observer, but for the wearer, they know that treasure map that they’re wearing, and all those secrets, and I think that’s so beautiful. And it can be something that’s as pared down as a black suit, and you don’t see it, or it’s something that’s mega opulent, and has crystals all over it, and hours and hours of embroidery. I think that’s beautiful. And now for me, that becomes this whole concept of, "Where does all that live today?" You know, what does it mean for musicians who wear that onstage? What does it mean for people who just want to wear couture during the day? Or wear it for events, etc.? Is it a display of know-how and creativity? I mean, there’s so many different questions about where couture sits.

And the sheer manpower it takes to do that is just incredible.

There are all these other suppliers around Paris. That’s one thing a lot of people don’t know: couture can only be made in Paris. It’s one of the rules of couture—so there are all of these smaller artisans around the city. Some are small suppliers within consortiums of other suppliers and there’s maybe a single person that does this one beautiful technique. And they all get to work together sometimes on dresses or collections, and it’s really beautiful. There are lots of rules about couture that I’m still learning about and it’s very, very cool.

It’s a whole ecosystem that feels kind of ancient, that has really stood the test of time—people are still conveying this information to each other, a game of telephone with these rules. Sometimes I feel like the creative process with fashion, to the unschooled viewer, can be really opaque. You’re not sure where the person may have started to arrive at these ideas. I’m wondering, especially also with the way you work with music, and the way you’re visualizing these shows, is there often a single pinpoint that informs a whole new collection for you? Or is it just constantly taking from different sources of inspiration to put together these collections?

Yeah, ironically, I think the single pinpoint in recent history has always been these collections that have been collaborations with artists, because there’s something very, very specific that I can focus on, and go, really, really deep into. And then the ones where I’m just working with myself, it’s very internal and personal about what gets me excited. It could start from clothes that I want to wear, or vintage, or it could start from a fabric swatch or a picture. Or it can start from styling and forming silhouettes by cutting things up and pasting things together in 3D, and then trying to make a garment from that, or translating something from one material to another. So you’d style, cut, staple, sew, drape this Frankenstein thing together, and then you make it in knitwear. You know, what I mean? Or you maybe take an archive, just from Hubert [de Givenchy]. And you apply the style lines, and the waist and the silhouette to an outerwear jacket. What does that look like? You start to just play with these ideas and put them through a new filter. And I think that’s always fun, because then it has this link to heritage and reality. It automatically feels different than today. Or taking an archive dress and doing it in knit instead of silk. But, I mean, it’s so complicated. And there’s a sensibility about the whole thing—for instance, I’ve been working on the Alyx Air Force Ones. But I’m really just playing with changing seams like, there’s usually a seam on the upper that’s just taken away. Or overlapping panels in different ways, changing the leather, playing with the top stitching. And that’s because that shoe is almost like a white T shirt. The easiest thing to do is to do something so loud on a piece like that. But how can you make something refined and reduce and tinker with it in a really subtle way that isn’t distracting from its perfection, because it’s already perfect? And then to have the opportunity to actually explore that idea with something like the Air Force is so cool. I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes it can be very maximal. And other times it can just be like...

Just a miniscule adjustment.

[Laughs.] Yeah, it really depends, because also when you’re bringing archetypes into collections, whether that’s a five-pocket, or a white T shirt, or a plaid shirt, there becomes a moment where you reach a threshold of it no longer becoming an archetype, and it’s going into some other thing. And in my collections, I always feel like there need to be these moments of grounding within them that take the extreme pieces—whether that’s extreme outerwear or a leather piece or something like a leather jumpsuit—and grounds those pieces with just a beautiful, simple cashmere turtleneck or a little plaid shirt peeking out. You know, that kind of wrong print that actually would exist in how you dress in real life when you’re just pulling clothes out of the closet? That’s what brings the color palette and styling into something that makes some of these really extreme concepts and ideas become palatable. So that’s my little recipe or my unique way of approaching things, because all those choices are taken into account. My upbringing and my roots, all of the love and passion I’ve had for fashion and archetypes and sportswear and archival knowledge, it gets kind of regurgitated in the mess of how I put together a collection. [Laughs.] When I feel something should be extreme, or just stay how it is.

You’re constantly innovating and changing, but you also have a little bit of an eye on the classics.

Exactly.

You have that in your rearview mirror a little bit. Which, with an older brand, like Givenchy—Hubert de Givenchy is now quite far removed from the actual brand as it is. What do you associate him with?

I associate him with a few different cultural moments. When he was designing clothes at the beginning, it was for this group of women in Paris that would change clothes for, you know, work, tea, and dinner, they’d have maybe three looks in a day. And he proposed this concept where you’d have three looks, but the looks could be interchangeable within one another, which was a very dynamic concept for the time. And then I really associate him with elegance, and the little black dress and pearls, like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Also later, he did all these amazing prints and animal patterns, and he really got into vibrant color. In the 70 years of Givenchy, there’s been so much beautiful animation of the codes within the house. And a lot of it just needs to be shown to the world. But going through the archive and looking at it all, it’s so inspiring. He was such a talented and charismatic and elegant designer.

It’s cool to hear about the patterns and the animal prints and the bright colors, because I think we associate him with the little black dress and this classic idea of elegance. And it’s also inspiring to hear that he was really reaching and exploring these different aesthetic ideas.

Yeah, and he loves symbols. So for instance, he worked for Elsa Schiaparelli prior to starting his own brand, and her father’s cousin was an archaeologist who worked on some tombs in Egypt. So their whole crew was really into the Egyptian antiquities and iconography. Our logo, the 4G logo, is actually the letter H and G in hieroglyphics. So the four Gs are actually Hubert de Givenchy, but in hieroglyphics. And then there are all these symbols that he used in a lot of the prints, too, like the fish and the four-leaf clover. He even had a rose named after him. In this next collection that I’m going to show, I’m bringing out some of the funky prints that are cool.

I can’t wait to see them. I love this idea that there’s a little bit of an obsession with these codes, the secret language he’s giving you. And you’re unlocking your own piece of the pie. That’s what’s so lovely about having your own brand, and then also having this really historic brand, is you get to look at those callbacks and kind of mine all these little secrets that he’s left.

Exactly.

I want to pivot a bit to this idea of creating sustainability, both at Alyx and at Givenchy. Is there a single aspect that has been super instinctual for you in terms of creating these fibers, or maybe the dyeing process, or upcycling—is any one of those things especially familiar to you from coming up in this world?

For each product category, there’s a different set of goals that you want to try to reach. And each company and their supply chain is able to approach those goals differently. And since I started working and understanding ways to implement sustainability in my work, I continue to learn more and more. A great example is recycled nylons. That’s something that sounds so great, right? But recently I was speaking with somebody who works with defining some of these benchmarks for sustainable fashion. And she was saying that recycled nylons are amazing. But we have to remember, when we’re working with them, the yarns are becoming smaller, because they’re recycled, and they shed. So you want to make it on garments that are not going to be washed, because you don’t want the microplastics to go into the oceans. You wouldn’t want to use something like that on swim trunks. And I had never thought about that before. You just kind of take it to one step, like, "Okay, I recycled something, and I made it, and now it’s done." But you have to think about the responsibility of the afterlife of that garment after it’s been purchased. And that was another level of thinking, so then I began to go further into recycling. It’s also something that’s so much about the logistics of supply chains within cities, and even trade agreements between countries. For instance, having something that’s recyclable, but is impossible to recycle by the means of the country that you’re living in, isn’t very helpful, of course. So using materials that could just be thrown in the recycling bin in your local community, that makes sense for everybody. But if you’re going to make something out of recycled material that only that manufacturer can recycle, then you as a brand or a designer need to be the one responsible for recycling it, or give people access to recycling methods for that product.

That’s the process, or better yet, with all the sustainability and recyclable materials, what about making something that doesn’t ever need to be recycled? Something that’s been made out of such a quality material that it lasts for years and years, that’s so beautiful that you want to give it to your kids and grandkids? Is that the most sustainable thing? The water that was polluted creating that single thing that’s going to last for 100 years—was that worth it? So there are all these questions and conversations that I started having, the deeper I got into it. For me, I do what I can always, given the supply chain and the project that I’m working on. A lot of times I’m not even vocal about it, because I don’t think it’s something that deserves a gold star or some kind of public acknowledgement. I think that as a designer living today, we should always be working towards sustainability. And every single year, I’m improving, improving, improving on the ways that I’m implementing sustainability into all of my design processes. One thing that I do feel proud about is Alyx. Maybe proud is the wrong word. But I’m very pleased that Alyx was one of the first brands that proposed this idea of sustainability and recycled materials while making product that looked new. There was always this concept around sustainability and recycled product, that it needed to look like Frankenstein, or you need to see elements of the recycling. But we did our Visual line six years ago and it’s just a black T shirt or a gray T shirt, it looks new. And the same thing with the Nike shoes that I did, the first Air Force Ones—that project was around dyeing leather without using water, using CO2 gas that was spun super fast to dye the skins with the moisture that was already in the skin. And it looks just like a new, beautiful Air Force One. So I’m super interested in this concept of using sustainability and different techniques to make clothes that look new. You know, that’s interesting. Or there’s the shoe repair idea, there’s so many levels to it that I think can be exciting.

Right, maybe we actually don’t need to create a new alphabet, we can create the basics or the classics in a sustainable way and in so doing, you lead the way for other people to do the same. And maybe it’s about making collections that don’t need to glorify the process of sustainability as its own design aesthetic necessarily, but can just be a part of garment making now, as it should be.

Exactly, like the new thing I’ve been learning about—I mean, there are so many ways you can approach it. There’s this program called CLO 3D, and when you sketch the garment, you type in the fabric, and the weight of the fabric, and it shows on an avatar how it will drape, but then also spits out a pattern that the factory can use to make an actual garment. What’s amazing is, when you put the pattern into CLO 3D with the fabric, and you see how it drapes, you get to see what’s wrong with the first sample digitally. So that very first sample you make is much closer to something that’s going to be used. There’s so much waste in these first prototypes, where we might choose the wrong fabric and it doesn’t work, so this is attempting to kill that first step where there’s a lot of waste. And that’s such a brilliant way to approach sustainability today, through technology and understanding things so much farther down the line in digital format before it goes into the physical. I thought that was an amazing breakthrough that I’ve begun to work with this year.

You’re starting from a much more perfect place than you would be, and I can imagine there is so much trial and error, just making something that works on a functional level. So Alyx has been doing runway shows now for a while, and I wanted to talk about where you see these live shows existing in the fashion ecosystem right now. What do you love about them? I think we’ve spoken about how you always wanted to do that with Alyx.

It’s become the format that people take in information in our industry, not to say that it can’t be done in different ways. Like Alyx was really known for being a brand that was successful without showing at the beginning, because we just did catalogues with Nick Knight, and we weren’t doing shows. But then the shows are really amazing because people can gather and celebrate the brand. People can see the clothes in real life and see how they move. There’s that element of an immersive experience: that the space and the music and the clothes and the casting have a dialogue for the viewer. I also love showing how clothes look on different people, different ethnicities, different body shapes. I think that’s really important. Often when I was just shooting lookbooks, I didn’t have the ability to show the clothes on as many different types of ethnicities and body shapes; that’s interesting to play with and show when you have a collection of 40 looks. It allows so many more people to project themselves onto the collection, which I think is beautiful and less limiting. For all those reasons, even though it’s such an old way of presenting in so many ways, it’s still the way that I think best serves us today.