Back to the Roots with Akris

An exclusive interview for Paris Fashion Week with Albert Kriemler, creative director of Akris, about his new collection Fall-Winter 2021 and fashion film directed by award- winning director Anton Corbijn.

Your starting point for this collection?

On a walk.

An image of a woman on a walk. Liberated. Determined. Mysterious. St.Gallen, the home and heart of Akris. Staying close to your roots. Embroidery, the foundation of our house and this very town.

Your vision of what Akris should be in 2021?

Ease and movement were very important to me. Her putting on a layered, voluminous, enveloping cover, roomy enough to wrap her core, and light enough to move fast, adds to the freedom of a woman walking with ease. Ease was long considered the contrary of elegance, but for me both have always been integral; and 2021, more than ever before, women seem not willing to sacrifice the former for the latter. We are in an important evolution of dress codes.

Your approach to working with the ateliers?

Giving back to the community. We are creative people in fashion, but we also have a responsibility. This collection is a tribute to regional roots and local savoir-faire and to a city, which has been our epicenter for 99 years. I wanted to play with everything that is at the core of our house. Most visible in the St.Gallen embroidery, revealing the Akris letters on a second glance, the Trapezoid, standing for A – as in Akris, Alice and Albert, and the St.Gallen Map print, our new signature, which holds the location of our atelier, where Akris is cultivated every day.

Your prediction for the future of craft?

Craft is the center of what we do. It is the essence. But craft demands innovation. And authenticity. Craft was often used as a synonym for exclusivity, a justification for a higher price, but for me, craft is a stripping back to the roots. I think that people will now opt more for the honesty in craft.

Your hope for the future of fashion weeks?

That we just not go back to normal. But seize the moment to transform the richness and realness of the films, and the way that everyone is finding their own, unique voice, into future fashion weeks. I miss the excitement of the physical show moment and the community aspect to it. But most of all, I want people to actually feel my collections again. In the end, we wear clothes on our bodies, on our skin. This is something we need to feel, not just look on screens at it.