“I feel quite empty and happy at the same time,” said Pieter Mulier backstage after his final show for Alaïa, which was met with a standing ovation. Mulier is leaving the house after five years at the helm for a new adventure: starting July 1, he will be assuming the role of creative director at Versace. “This last collectsion was about clothes to wear. What is a jacket? What is a dress? It’s basically a vocabulary of the last five years. It’s what I learned at Alaïa that I’m giving to the next designer. It's like leaving the keys on the table. At Alaïa, I learned precision, I learned editing, and I learned that real luxury is a perfectly cut jacket,” Mulier continued.
The show took place earlier this evening at Paris’s Fondation Cartier. Hundreds of industry insiders, including Anna Wintour, Matthieu Blazy, and Mulier’s mentor Raf Simons, turned up to greet and cheer the outgoing designer in one half of the building’s ground floor. The other half was left empty, with one wall taken over by a huge screen that showed portraits of every single member of the Alaia team.
A few days earlier, a briefcase containing a leather puzzle had arrived at guests’ residences: it was the show’s invitation. When put together, the pieces formed a brown bodice put together with metal studs. It was both a nod to founder Azzedine Alaïa’s legacy of form and Mulier’s building upon it, since he took over Alaïa’s creative teams in 2021.
Mulier’s architectural eye has been formative of the silhouette women leaned towards post-pandemic. Meanwhile, the mesh ballet flats and the Le Teckel shoulder bag he introduced during the same period became wardrobe staples. Alaïa owner Richemont doesn’t break out brand revenues, but group sales grew 11% year-on-year at constant exchange rates to €6.4 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2025. In fewer words, Mulier’s Alaïa was good, and it sold well.
Mulier’s comms game is also strong. Over the years, his community has gotten used to receiving playful invitations, while his show notes have always been personal and vulnerable: the invitation to the Fall/Winter 2024 collectsion was a folding leather chair, whereas last season’s one was a WhatsApp2 text from the designer himself. At the first show after he took over the house in 2021, guests found on their seats a letter addressed to Azzedine: “I tried to get into your mind, but that’s impossible… We met, but I never had the opportunity to know you. Now, I have the opportunity to thank you,” it read.
Mulier was the first designer to assume the role of creative director at Alaïa, after the founder’s passing in November 2017. Speculation as to who might pick up the baton hasn’t quite started yet. I suppose we are all a little tired of the musical chairs? (Personally, I am incredibly tired of the phrase.) But there’s also another possible reason: the house took a whole three years to appoint Mulier, reissuing archival best-sellers until they found the right man for the job. Would that be possible in today’s world? One can only dream.
In the meantime, here’s what some buyers, press, and friends of the house had to say about Mulier’s era-defining tenure at Alaïa.
Bruno Astuto, chief fashion and creative officer of Brazil’s JHSF
Farewell collectsions are among fashion’s most treacherous exercises. When a designer has genuinely elevated a house, the exit demands a particular kind of courage: the courage of restraint. Pieter Mulier understood this. After a tenure at Alaïa that was nothing short of brilliant, he chose not to leave with a crescendo.
There was none of the visual complexity that marked some of his most memorable chapters. Instead, he offered something far more difficult to achieve: sophisticated simplicity. This reads, to me, as an act of generosity toward whoever comes next. By deliberately lowering the volume on his final note, Mulier has left the house’s next chapter breathing room to write their own story.
Commercially, this collectsion will perform. It will sell. It will live in the wardrobes of real women, worn on real occasions — and that, too, feels intentional. A final gift: wearability as elegance, ease as legacy.
Mel Ottenberg, stylist and editor-in-chief of Interview
I love Pieter, I’m a big fan. I was a big fan of Azzedine Alaïa. I was lucky enough to do some work with Azzedine and to have some one-on-one experience with this house, which I’m very grateful for. And so to see someone take the vibe and do their own thing with it, which I feel like no one thought anyone could do, has been amazing. Pieter really did it in his own way. He’s a really powerful designer, and I think he just has such a great, genuine spirit as a person, and that really comes out in the work. This is a very somber period, more generally, and so this show also felt like the right kind of introspective expression for the world we live in.
Tiffany Hsu, chief buying & group fashion venture Officer, Mytheresa
It was really beautiful. It was a kind of retrospective of all the collectsions that he’s done with the brand, which made it quite an emotional show. What I can remember most vividly is the peplum coat and then all the dresses with all the layers of ruffles. I’m very sad that Pieter is leaving Alaïa, but also obviously very excited for his next move. I think it’s going to be very out of the box.
Chioma Nnadi, head of editorial content, British Vogue
From the moment you walked in, you could feel the emotional charge of the show. There were huge portraits of Pieter Mulier’s team on digital screens — in fact, there was a book of those images on each of the seats, which I thought was a really nice tribute, a way to say thank you that was heartfelt. The narrow seating of the show heightened that mood; you could also feel some of the more dramatic shearling coats as the models walked by. The clothes overall had a stripped-back and essential beauty and sophistication that typified the spirit of what Pieter had built and achieved in his time at the house. It’s no surprise that he got a standing ovation.
Osman Ahmed, writer and editor
I thought that was such a beautiful farewell and in a way, such a profoundly selfless act, which says so much about Pieter and who he is and what has kind of defined his time at Alaïa. He made this collectsion, which is his last, all about Azzedine. It was a reset and a reminder of the man who built this house, who spent so many years seeking perfection and working on one garment sometimes for years, making one skirt 50 times before it was right. I think Pieter, right from the beginning, was so aware that it is such a precious house — a house for a designer’s designer.
Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, fashion editor and stylist
Pieter bowed out of Alaïa with incredible graciousness. Tabula rasa. Back to the basics and the codes he developed, leaving a pristine path for a future ethos. It’s an impossible legacy to follow, and I respect this exit.
Olivia Singer, writer, editor and creative consultant
I think I’m up there among Pieter’s most fervent fans — on a personal level, I don’t think there’s any brand I’ve bought as much in recent years — and the absolute elegance of this show, combined with the atmosphere of a small room packed with love, proved why. He described it as “only beauty and clothes… clothes for real people, not for an image,” and that’s exactly how it appeared: the most refined, exacting approach to constructing the most fluid, exquisite silhouettes. It felt so pure and, in an industry that is ever-expanding in bombast, that felt remarkable. He’s leaving vast shoes to fill.
Gab Waller, fashion sourcer
The end of an era, and it's hard not to feel a sense of sadness. Throughout Pieter Mulier's tenure at Alaïa, the house's DNA remained unmistakably strong across each collectsion. His final one was no exception. The collectsion carried every element of a true Alaïa style, though slightly quieter than usual. It felt stripped back to Alaïa's pure essence. It didn't need to be loud, its simplicity spoke for itself. I especially loved the 90s references. I'll greatly miss Mulier's time at Alaïa, dare I say his now iconic mesh ballerina flats may go down as one of my most requested styles ever. It will certainly remain in the top 10.
José Criales-Unzueta, style correspondent, Vanity Fair
This show was such a smart and considered way of going out. Not a “bang” or anything too ostentatious. Just a slow and steady build-up of a wardrobe by way of building layers and volume. It felt generous and like a cleanse, for Alaïa and for him as a designer, before a new chapter for both.
Brigitte Chartrand, chief buying and merchandising officer, Net-a-Porter
The show itself felt deeply emotional. The homage to his team was beautiful. Pieter delivered a collectsion that was extremely sexy in the most sophisticated way.
Alex Carl, consultant and stylist
I don’t quite have the right words, but in essence, what I admire about Pieter’s Alaïa was that he never made it about him. He made it about the women, his team, and Azzedine. And once again at his last show, he honored that — in a way, it was the most Azzedine of his shows. A palette cleanser for his successor to define from later than a muscle flexing exercise.
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