Akris

Albert Kriemler has entered his blue period. Unlike Picasso, the designer did not match the color to somber, disenfranchised subjects; instead the Akris universe of blue was a celebration of a woman’s entire day, from the early orange blue of pre-dawn to the ink of evening. “An exchange of AM and PM codes,” as the Swiss designer of the family fashion house explained.

Cyanotype, the photographic printing formulation sensitive to blue and ultraviolet light, was a jumping off point for the collection. From the Greek word kyanos translating to “dark blue impression,” the 19th century salt-reactive printing technique lent inspiration for Kriemler’s fall 2025 collection, particularly the sinuous work of Brooklyn artist Alyson Shotz.

In the atelier days before the show Kriemler encouraged handling of the fabrics, manipulating the taffeta and double-faced cashmere between his fingers to show the way the blue changes depending on the light and touch. The color, once produced from woad and indigo plants, can contain multitudes, he insisted. In fact, in many languages there is no one word for blue, and Kriemler used many to describe the shade that set the tone for the collection, from denim to what he called royal blue but which evoked either Yves Klein or the European Union depending on the garment and material.

The calm of the blue lit Gothic vaulted 14th century abbey was a soothing but striking precursor to the blood red strobe lighting of the Valentino show which directly followed it. In Western culture blue has come to represent boys, versus pink for baby girls, but historically blue was the color dedicated to history’s most famous powerful woman, the Virgin Mary. In Renaissance painting Mary was always depicted clothed in a luminous lapis, the ultramarine paint the most expensive shade. Kriemler was moved by the Siena exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past fall, which gathered masterpieces from the dawn of the Renaissance. Duccio di Buoninsegna and Pietro Lorenzetti certainly understood the power of a Mary robed in royal blue. But, as with the wearers of Akris’s pieces, it’s always Mary’s identity one is struck by first, the clothes only enhancing. In a season where silhouettes crept up to necks and redrew a woman’s body shape, Kriemler’s layers of expertly cut, luxurious fabrics put the focus back on the person, not the garments. The Akris woman wears clothes as armor not costume, and at a moment of powerful men behaving badly on the international stage it was comforting to see clothes set to dress a woman in charge.

Distilling the collection around a single hue allowed the superior quality of Akris’s fabrics and cut to occupy pride of place, and for texture to take on amplified importance. Horsehair was woven into the brand’s Alice top-handle purse; ostrich feathers bounced on satin pumps and a single earring; there were Serra-like undulations on a laser-cut scuba velvet skirt; and the surprise of a cropped trench in deep sea taffeta. There was something refreshing about a show so tonally edited, so clear in its commitment to one color. Though I did overhear a buyer ask a colleague while exiting, “What happens if you don’t like blue?”

But Kriemler was confident in his choice, “No other color is so different in different fabrics and times of day,” he said. The show was titled “Blue Hour” and referenced the “moment when day and night cross.” Things look different at dusk: under the blue glow of bedtime my son recently was convinced his hoodie hanging on the bedpost was a goblin. Likewise, the Akris collection was not always what it seemed. A shearling coat was, in fact, made from woven silk and wool; an overcoat was reimagined in midnight paillettes; cobalt nylon tubes coiled into a netted shell and skirt. A goat shearling coat was reversible to become an inky rain jacket. Kriemler described the hue as “a soft to the ever stark black.” However, black was incorporated as well, like a deep, beautiful bruise. The black pieces played with texture: jet-colored pebble embroidery was produced in Akris’s home of St. Gallen, Switzerland, a historic center for the craft, and where the nearby lake district contains many shades of blue.