Max Alexander becomes youngest fashion designer to host collection as Louis Vuitton takes event on mountain ride
Paris fashion week.
PARIS:
Max’s collection featured 15 distinct designs, inspired by florals, creative recycling, and his eye for imagination.
The prodigy told CBS News that sustainability was a big part of his design process.
“My collection consists of 15 dresses and they’re all, well, 90% of my show is biodegradable, recyclable, sustainable, made from dead stock and surplus.”
His standout pieces included an upcycled Indian saree reworked into a high-low gown:
In 2023, the designer told PEOPLE that he believed he was Guccio, Gucci in his past life, shortly after his Guiness World Record win as the youngest runway fashion designer.
Back in 2024, Max was also invited to give a talk at the United Nations about how to help prevent fashion waste and over-consumption of fabrics in the industry.
“I am happy I got to show the world my designs and maybe encourage people to think about reuse and not buying so much fast fashion”, he stated.
In an Instagram post, Alexander thanked those who believed in him from the very beginning of his journey.
At the event, meanwhile, models wore mountain capes, shepherds’ hats and carried bags with bells attached to them as Louis Vuitton brought the curtain down on Paris fashion week with a back-to-nature show Tuesday.
Parading in the main Louvre courtyard, with actors Zendaya and Ana de Armas in attendance, the brand’s artistic director Nicolas Ghesquiere said the aim was to take the well-heeled spectators back to founder Louis Vuitton’s roots in the Jura mountains.
Louis Vuitton left the Jura region as a teenager to set up shop in Paris in 1837.
“For this show, I really wanted to highlight the idea that nature is the greatest creator. It wasn’t about imitating it, but rather about sublimating nature,” Ghesquiere told journalists after the event entitled “Super Nature”.
The French designer, who used hemp-based faux fur for his coats, said he wanted to highlight global “nomadism” through the patchwork dresses and wide rattan hats resembling inverted traditional baskets.
The show also highlighted the work of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko whose paintings were on the back of jackets and the front of skirts worn by Louis Vuitton models.
Ukrainian designer, Lilia Litkovska, who joined the Paris fashion week calendar this year, presented her first show on the final day.
Litkovska said the deconstructed clothes and biker boot outfits with models walking the runway with headlamps were inspired by events in her war-stricken home country.
She said the inspiration was walking home from her Kyiv studio in complete darkness and bitter cold.
“I had a flashlight, and there were people in the street across the street with me too. It’s hard to explain, but you feel you’re not alone. You feel a sense of closeness in that absolute darkness. We crossed our beams, and it was like a dialogue, a silent dialogue,” she said.
Although the first fashion week was held in New York, the event itself derives from “salon shows” (“défilés de mode” in French, literally “fashion parades”) in Paris couture salons.
A fashion week consists of a week of organized events of multiple designer’s collections. Before this organized event was recognized in New York City, fashion showings were being held in Paris as early as the 1700s. Some earlier showings were presented on mannequins, which made it difficult for clients to see fashion pieces fully since the mannequin didn’t have the same mobility a model did. These early showings were only to clients purchasing items and were shown on mannequins. In the 1800s, showings began to change. Charles Frederick Worth, noted for haute couture, began showing multiple pieces together and of a higher design. These designs were showcased to get the customer’s attention in buying the pieces. Jeanne Paquin is the first designer to make her showings public and Paul Poiret is the first to host parties after his events.
In the mid 1800s, Mme Pauline von Metternich, an Austrian Princess and wife to the Ambassador of Paris, saw one of Worth’s sketches and employed him to make her a gown. He gained much recognition through his powerful clients and opened his own haute couture house in Paris in 1858, which sold luxury fashion to upper-class women.
In 1945, the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture established another set of rules to regulate and determine Haute Couture houses. In order to meet the criteria, the house had to ensure they followed the updated rules with one of them being that in each season, a couture house must present a collection of at least 35 runs with both daytime and evening wear to the Paris press. AFP
