Anna Ewers Is Cool, Impervious, Made to Exacting Standards in Alaïa WS2024 Campaign
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Comparing the Kaia Gerber Alaïa WS2023 campaign with Anna Ewer’s Alaïa [IG] a year later WS2024 images, words like ‘stern’ come to mind in the new campaign lensed by Sam Rock [IG].
In the tradition of Alaïa, WS 2023 Gerber evolved in the clothes to a place where she truly owned her own sensuality and sexual glamour.
The balance beam of the model owning the clothes versus its opposite state of the clothes owning the model seems to be in play in the new images.
There was an aggressive ‘pinup’ quality to the 2023 WS campaign — a relatable, seductive, glamorous concept of sexuality that is gone in 2024.
Anna Ewers is among our most sensual models working today, and this campaign is driven by the opposite of female approachability. The taut pull of Ewers’ hair and the lack of invitation to enter her world in her gaze, prompts the word ‘impervious’.
The meticulous aspect of Pieter Mulier’s vision for the new season of Alaïa is well-understood in the designer’s observations about an almost unlimited number of inner buttons anchoring many of the clothes.
One must take time to dress, the designer explained at the mid-summer fashion show. “Every jacket, you have to close with the 15 or 16 buttons on the inside.” It’s a moment of inner dialogue between the woman in the mirror and her real self — or vice versa. Coats had 35 buttons.
We add the word ‘rigor’ to understanding the evolution of the latest Alaïa collection. “Everything is tailored, everything, so even dresses are made by tailors,” Mulier explained to the press. Because he’s dressing women, the designer turned to corset-makers and designers for assistance.
“For a man, power comes from the shoulder. And for a woman it’s more from the female curves,” Mulier postulated.
Naked dressing has had a major post-pandemic run, and it’s far from over. Mulier’s new campaign contributes to that conversation.
Women are very much about owning our own bodies right now — much of that sentiment fueled by new laws around the world and here in America — demanding that the state will control our bodies.
Having just devoted 5 minutes to a quick review of older Azzedine Alaïa imagery, the poses are much more dynamic — as were Kaia’s last year.
There was joy, too, even in a self-aware, half-smile that Gerber owned a year ago in the same campaign.
