In a poignant moment in his career, Haider Ackermann offered an opulent vision for Fall Winter 2011-12 at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris this morning. Sending out the two first looks in a deafening silence, one could make no mistake of the designer’s newfound ability to command the attention of a room packed to the rafters with fashion’s most influential faces. From Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin to Mario Testino & Emmanuelle Alt, Grace Coddington & Anna Wintour – all were in attendance to witness the succession to Ackermann’s acclaimed Spring Summer 2011 offering, a collection that finally sparked the world’s attention to his sleek, decadent aesthetic.

Calling to mind a wandering traveller in a dream-like state, Haider opened the show with greatcoats accented by a wide satin lapel, cinched at the waist with trailing belts. Bone-white felt broke the darkness with rich texture, extending as a shredded panel from a suede biker jacket or hugging the hips in a high pencil skirt (that fell to the floor). Moving through the motions of his artistic draping, Haider applied a darkly tropical palette to silk, wool and leather – with medicinal tones of chartreuse, magenta, midnight blue & emerald paired with highlights in encrusted copper or champagne glitter. Towering ankle boots were slashed with laces and zipped across the foot, edged in raw crocodile.

In summation, this show was a beautiful thing to watch. The models walked at a near glacial pace, as Leonard Cohen’s deep timbre swallowed the audience in ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’. With no great leaps and bounds from his signature aesthetic, Ackermann’s latest outing was as haunting and beautiful as ever – unfettered by newfound fame.

Via Interview Magazine, A BLOG offers a poignant, philosophical dialogue between Haider Ackermann and his muse and confidante Tilda Swinton.

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Haider Ackermann is having a moment. It’s a moment not unlike the ones that frequently occur during his runway shows, when a drape of fabric billows to reveal a flash of skin, or a leg moves to break a line, or a detail shifts to disrupt the meticulously arranged order of things: a moment where control has been ceded and things are in motion and what will happen will happen, and a kind of beauty emerges in watching it all unfold.

Since debuting his first collection in 2002, the Colombian-born Ackermann has boasted the proverbial small but devoted following of intellectuals, hipsters, and forward-thinking types—among them his interviewer here, the actress Tilda Swinton. But within the last couple of years, the larger fashion world has begun to catch on—and it has done so with a vengeance, as evidenced by the international critical response to his last few collections.

It hasn’t hurt, of course, that Ackermann, in his own vaguely professorial way, has a flair for the dramatic. At his pre-spring presentation at Pitti W last June, held in a palazzo in Florence, Italy, model Jamie Bochert opened the show by wandering off the runway and sitting down at a grand piano to perform a medley of songs that included “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Ackermann’s first men’s collection, unveiled that same night, was heralded as one of the most important debuts in menswear last year—then in December he announced that he would not produce another collection until he felt suitably compelled, setting the fashion blogosphere ablaze with incredulity.

It’s easy to see why so many people are suddenly becoming devout Ackermann-heads: The clothes are built for action. His elongated, sculptural silhouettes, often accented by arrays of loops, drapes, and folds in contrasting fabrics and colors, seem to come alive when worn and set in mo tion. His pieces incorporate ele ments of both high fashion and streetwear, ranging from long silk gowns and pleated maxiskirts to Perfecto-like jackets, and feature couture details rendered in materials like jersey and leather. They are impeccably tailored and fastidiously constructed but also romantic and sensual, and play with the notions of both fashion-as-armor and undressing-as-revelation. And they are undeniably sexy, but sexy in the sense that they keep you on your toes and seductively reel you in.

It’s impossible to say what role Ackermann’s upbringing has played in his work, but he has always had very specific ideas about fashion. His French-born father worked as a cartographer, causing his family to move frequently, so he spent his early years traveling around Europe and Africa, with stops in places like Algeria, Chad, and Ethiopia, before attending high school in the Netherlands. Upon graduation, Ackermann shuttled off to Belgium, where he studied fashion at the famed Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, an avant-gardist hub that counts Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten among its alumni. But as Swinton notes in her conversation with Ackermann, there are certain tropes that have always floated in and around his collections—many of them having to do with the notion of travel and the anxieties and freedoms that come with the experience of moving between different cultures and being a stranger in a strange land. She caught up with Ackermann in Antwerp.

READ THE INTERVIEW AT INTERVIEWMAGAZINE.COM

Photography Craig McDean

Exclusive backstage photographs by Erik Madigan Heck of Haider Ackermann’s Spring Summer 2011 show at Espace Vendôme on Saturday, 2nd of October, 2010.

In a reuniting moment from their first collaboration for Haider’s “A Carte Blanche called Opium” presentation at the Palazzo Corsini in Florence, Erik captures the next step in the designer’s work – an evolution in saturated, vibrant hues, flowing silken draping & a reinterpretation of biker leather in luxuriously hard yet feminine forms.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18236655[/vimeo]

In an exclusive collaboration, we offer Erik’s never-before-seen photographs from the upcoming Nomenus Quarterly #10, released online on September 1st, 2010.

(This interview and gallery is presented in two parts. Click here for the UNDERCOVER article)

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An interview with Erik Madigan Heck, part II: HAIDER ACKERMANN

(Continued from part I: UNDERCOVER)
DT: Well let’s switch the discussion back to another body of work you just finished for Haider Ackermann. You were recently flown over to Florence to photograph with Haider for his first menswear collection at Pitti Uomo. Can you tell me about how that collaboration came about, and what it was like when you got to Florence?

EMH: I actually had never met Haider before the shoot in Italy, he was preparing for his presentation, and Michele Montagne suggested I fly over to make a series of photographs, as she had seen the project I did last year with Ann Demeulemeester.

When I arrived in Florence it was a couple days before the show and it was a bit chaotic, but I just started shooting immediately. Haider would style a look on one of the models and then I would take them to different parts of this ancient Palazzo and photograph them individually. I consider myself very much an environmental photographer, so working in Palazzo Corsini was a dream. There was so much history to build off of in each space within the Palazzo, so my job was very easy.

DT: What was the interaction between you and Haider on the shoot?

EMH: I would show Haider images as I worked periodically, but mostly I left him to work with Michele on the styling and took the models to random quiet corners in the house. I like to work alone, and have it be quiet, you always get a more pure sentiment I think when it’s just subject and photographer left to face each other alone. I view photography as a sort of dance between subject and death. You have to stare it in the face by yourself.

DT: Can you speak about the actual images presented below (from Nomenus Quarterly 10), and do you have a favorite image from this series?

EMH: There are around 25-30 final images I chose for Haider, and they really range quite dramatically in their appearance. After I arrived and had a chance to really sit with the collection for a while I understood that both conceptually and aesthetically the photographs must vary as much as his constructions did. My interpretation of Haider’s collection was that it was very romantic, while also being vastly different from piece to piece. I really wanted the photographs to mirror this inconsistency, and create a sort of book of images that were all individually beautiful, but didn’t necessarily seem to fit together- like a box of old photographs you would find at a flea market. It was easy enough with the environment and the casting. Everything present was already eclectic and eccentric. I just had to document the interaction.

I think the portrait of Kate Summers is probably my favorite image. She has such a beautifully classic face, and it was a pure moment. There was no make-up, no lighting, she had just turned away from Haider as he was styling her, and I captured her frozen. It looks like a very posed photograph, but in fact she had kind of turned around and looked up right at the exact moment I put my camera up. It was Henri Cartier Bresson’s decisive moment.

DT: Last question, but relating to what we were speaking on earlier, do you view these photographs for Haider Ackermann as more than just fashion images? What is the political motivation underneath them, or do you like everyone else also sometimes make images that are just for the sake of fashion?

EMH: You’re trying to catch me aren’t you! I will say this, one of the most powerful things anyone can do today is to make something truly beautiful. I don’t believe that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder- that is a fallacy. Beauty is universal, its been proven by numerous philosophers over the last century, we all know something beautiful when we see it. So yes, I think the series for Haider is political in that I have created some very beautiful photographs. It was circumstantially different than a lot of my other work, in that I didn’t have time to premeditate a contrived plan for how the photographs would evolve, but I certainly was familiar with Haider’s work before arriving. After sitting with his collection I knew that I wanted to create something strange in terms of sequence, because the way the clothes came together as a whole collection was unusual. In fashion, as in contemporary art, everyone tends to work in series. It is comforting to most artists to create a series of relatable imagery rather than one stand-alone image. However, I personally prefer viewing photographs and paintings as insular objects, so with this project I made a point to move away from having to work in a unified manner. I suppose I was trying to think differently about how we are supposed to look at photographs in sequence and in relation to each other, so I wanted to just take as many individually beautiful images as I could and not have them have to relate to each other necessarily.

(To read part I, click here.)

Nomenus Quarterly #10 is launched online on September 1st, 2010.
http://www.nomenusquarterly.com

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Photography by Erik Madigan Heck.
Styling by Haider Ackermann.
Location: Palazzo Corsini, Florence, Italy

Courtesy of Pitti Immagine, here is the first glimpse backstage at Haider Ackermann’s show at the Palazzo Corsini in Florence last month. Watch as the structure of the floating chandeliers is constructed in the daylight, and the show arranged for the spectacular evening…

Video by Angelo Terado for the Foundation Pitti Discovery.

Francesco Bonami is the artistic director of Pitti Immagine and senior curator at large of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. On the occasion of Pitti Woman Nº6, he offered this insightful, elegant prose to preface Haider Ackermann’s carnet de voyage, the inspiration journal created for A Carte Blanche called ‘Opium’.

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Forget about me – The candle’s been snuffed.

The Emperor, the mesmerizing book by Ryszard Kapuscinski on the last days of Ethiopia’s last Emperor Hailie Selassie begins with those words borrowed from a Gypsy tango. Like a candle the old Emperor has been ‘snuffed’ from History. The writer describes the sounds of footsteps echoing in the empty palace. The Emperor abandoned by everybody – alone. Power deprived of the powerless, it’s like an empty barrel.

Haider Ackermann’s deserted Palazzo is romantic, mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time. The abandoned building has been transformed into a ghostly place. Ackermann’s vision has the rhythm of a Gypsy tango and the sensual feeling of the hazy light of North Africa. A Fata Morgana, a mirage moving solitary within the walls of a Renaissance Palace. If you could imagine a person where the brain has been switched with the heart you could envision Haider Ackermann’s way of seeing, thinking, feeling. The heart is thinking. The brain is pounding. In Florence, the ghosts of Jean Genet, Hailie Sellassie and Arthur Rimbaud are getting together, surrounded by many Fata Morganas that float over the soft horizon of a liquid desert.

Haider Ackermann is celebrating the walk of shame of people whose days weighed over their nights. Again from The Emperor an image which mirrors Ackermann’s universe: “I see him now as he walks, stops, walks again, lifts his head upward as though absorbed in prayer. O God, save me from those who, crawling on their knees, hide a knife they would like to sink into my back. But how can God help? All the people surrounding the Emperor are just like that – on their knees, and with knives. It’s never comfortable on the summits. An icy wind always blows, and everyone crouches, watchful lest his neighbour hurl him down the precipice.”

A Palazzo that became a body. A Palazzo that felt like a person. The attic turned into a skull. The people moving inside like thoughts, nightmares, desires.
People wearing clthes, shedding their skins. Like in Fellini’s Roma women move like leaves, men standing like branches. Women and men with arms like fluttering wings – ready to fly somewhere else.
Another ride into another journey somewhere else. The Palazzo dreams of being a desert, the only architecture the dunes, decorated by a molding made of clouds.
Candles turning into stars. The steps become silent, no more echoing of the empty room. Emptiness starts filling the space. Silence searching for the shade.

Women moving into men. Men moving into women. Clothes like flags flapping into the wind. Nobody’s talking. Nobody’s pounding. Everybody’s feeling. Someone is walking in the Palazzo or is it just me, following myself?
Haider Ackermann sails up the river of fashion like the Marlowe of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, inside the jungle of moods, memories, tales and legends. Noises all around. THey could be lovers hiding, they could be insects crawling. Leaves, bushes, hair, sweat and breath, fog.
Darkness, and again the light of another candle ready to be snuffed, ready to be forgotten again.

© Pitti Immagine Discovery / Haider Ackermann

Last night Haider Ackermann hosted a lavish evening of fashion, performance and celebration in the Palazzo Corsini on the edge of the Arno river in Florence, on the occasion of Pitti Woman Nº6. In a unique fusion of the baroque surroundings and the bohemian spirit of Haider, guests witnessed a champagne reception followed by a piano concert and fashion parade, featuring both womens and menswear silhouettes. Upon entering the maze of exquisitely decorated, elegantly faded rooms, we were greeted by white-clad waiters attending tables covered in silver tureens piled with exotic fruits – grapes, pomegranates, figs and redcurrants all entangled in a striking melee.

Accompanying the opulent fare, piles of silver-lined books lay for our perusal – Haider’s  limited edition inspiration book printed for the occasion. With a poetic preface written by Francesco Bonami, the tome is rich with content from many of Haider’s idols, friends and frequent collaborators including Paolo Roversi, Robert Mapplethorpe, Berlinde de Bruckyere, Antony & the Johnsons and Tilda Swinton.

At 9:30pm sharp, the show began in the central courtyard of the Palazzo, under crystal chandeliers hung on iron cables. Opening with a spotlit shadow on a dark velvet curtain, model Jamie Bochert walked in the first blush pink gown across the pebbled floors of the courtyard to a grand piano, to join the violins with her deep, mellow vocals and discordant piano.

Entitled “A Carte Blanche named Opium“, the showcase was a romantic homage to a travelling woman and her man alone in the deserted palazzo, channeling a gypsy spirit of North Africa.

The womens looks were a study in eveningwear that eloquently anticipated the Florentine setting, with flowing satin gowns, tanks and trousers that were cinched with top-stitched obi belts and fell off the shoulder in reams of light draping. The colour story played off the menswear with a soft, feminine edge – with blushing pink, beige, subtle leopard and deep aubergine.

In the menswear, echoes of the souks and deserts abounded in rich tapestry fabrics, fish-like paillettes, fluid harem pants and vivid crimson, turquoise and aubergine silks offset with dusty grey and faded black. Layered loose fabrics of alternating textures and shades held a masculine grace and a relaxed grunge, belted and folded to reveal a gradient of colour, and an imbalance of lengths and proportion.

Both mens and womens looks were paired with pointed slippers, embellished with layers of peacock feathers, silver beading and leopard satin.

As the models wove in and out in a slow precession amongst the eclectic sofas and seats, Jamie closed the performance with a touching rendition of “Knocking on heaven’s door”. A reverent silence hung in the air for seconds before the applause re-animated the party. The white-clad waiters returned with dessert, taking to the runway to remind us of the famous Italian hospitality – paired with the travelling Columbian’s Belgian aesthetic for spectacular effect.

To view the full collection, please click here.

“We’re searching for the man behind the Ackermann woman. It’s just a start.”

The emotional oeuvre of his womenswear will truly be a difficult act to follow, but this is the next challenge taken by A#3′s Haider Ackermann, who will present his very first menswear silhouettes at Pitti Immagine in June.

As the womenswear guest of Pitti Immagine, Haider will primarily show his pre Spring 2011 womens collection, but has chosen to create a small selection of mens pieces to complement this landmark occasion outside of Paris fashion week.

Pitti released the statement below as a preview to the ideals behind his new work:

“Between force and fragility, between masculinity and femininity, the Ackermann women, with a distant gesture speaks about beauty, about melancholy, about wandering, about escaping a certain nostalgia…
about love… for men whose gesture are as « lointain », élégant, masculine, illusive, decadent, reserved, debauched…
his heart on the run… Carte blanche, named « opium ».”

Haider’s event for Pitti Immagine will be held on June 16th at the late-Baroque Palazzo Corsini in Florence, Italy. Please keep reading for more updates.

Above image: Portrait by Johan Sandberg for Purple Fashion Spring Summer 2006.

An invitation to curate A MAGAZINE never arrives at the same time in a designer’s career, and their issue never plots a specific evolution, nor will ever be remembered by a specific seasonal collection. It is this timeless condition that makes each issue special, celebrating the world that surrounds the garments and not always the garments and ‘fashion’ itself.

Nevertheless it is an apt task to revisit the beginnings, to observe both change and continuity in a designer’s creations. For those like Maison Martin Margiela and Yohji Yamamoto, this was over twenty years ago – but for younger designers like Haider Ackermann, this time is not so far in the distant past.

For The Early Days project, we present images from Haider Ackermann’s Fall Winter 2005 collection, shown at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris on March 4th, 2005 (It is interesting to note that this was when Haider began work on A#3, which was released that October). The collection is based on the fundamental principles of East meets West that Haider utilises with such fluidity, sculpting the garments around the feminine form with a balance of strictness and ease. The colours are faded and icy, with opulent natural fabrics and heavy embroidery as highlights. Sheer metallic silks, thick felt wools and mastic leathers are worn in muted and monochrome silhouettes. Coats and trousers combine military pockets and ruching for an experimental blend of hard and soft, a technique that Haider has refined over the years to great effect.

To look at these images and then to jump five years later to Haider’s most recent work is to see a defined step forward in a young designer’s career. From the finish and fit of the fabrics to the overall coherence of the collection, it is  clear that Haider’s ouvre is continuing to flourish and gain momentum, unhampered by commercial success. It seems inevitable that the purity and fluidity of his shapes – coupled with a quiet eclecticism of texture – will continue to win Haider Ackermann many loyal followers in the years to come.

Above images: All Haider Ackermann Fall Winter 2005, courtesy of Michele Montagne.

A is proud to announce that the next occasion of Pitti Immagine in Florence, Italy will play host to two of our most esteemed collaborators as the guest designers for the mens and womens collections showings.

As the 78th edition of Pitti Uomo, the designer who will present their spring summer 2011 mens collection is Raf Simons for Jil Sander. Having shown his ten year retrospective in 2005 at Pitti, Raf returns at the helm of Jil Sander. In the words of Pitti director Lapo Cianchi:

“for us, having seen his recent work for Jil Sander, we are again – or rather still – fascinated by his extraordinary ability to be in step with the times”.

As the 6th edition of Pitti W, presenting his pre-spring 2011 collection will be none other than A#3′s curator Haider Ackermann.

“We have been tracking Haider Ackermann since his first shows in Paris and now that his poetic, his visionary talent and his feeling for memory have come together with increasing dramatic and seductive force, we decided that the time has come to offer him a different stage – our stage where he can feel free to continue his personal story or perhaps even be inspired to experiment with something new. We too are very curious”.

The next Pitti Immagine takes place in Florence between the 15th and 18th of June 2010, and is an international fashion trade fair. At its highest level, Pitti provides a new and exciting stage for fashion designers to explore different mediums and a new environment to express their vision and reach a new audience through creatively focused fashion events.

Click here to see our previous coverage of their unique work, with last year’s UNDERCOVER and Proenza Schouler events.