Imane Ayissi Spring 2025 Couture: Form and Flurries

Lily Templeton

January 27, 2025 at 2:25 p.m.·1 min read

This season, Imane Ayissi wanted to explore the liminal space between what he sees as two opposing forces in fashion: structure and surface. Too often in his opinion, couture is a choice between sparse designs where cut is emphasized — or a more-is-more decorative approach.

“When you want to create a house or an important dress, you have to create the base plan and follow through until decoration — or a minimalist architecture,” the designer said after the show. “But there is that moment between the neutral basis and when you start to transform things.”

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Made largely from traditional textiles from the African continent, the collection hinged on adorning tailored pantsuits, day dresses and sinuous gowns with details teased out of the fabric used to make them — a suit given graphic fringes along all seams was one standout.

Elsewhere, Ayissi leaned into Parisian couture archetypes as part of his ongoing discourse on the parallels between high-end fashions across cultures and geographies.

A suit had a distinct filiation to Christian Dior’s “New Look” with its tailored jacket and voluminous skirt. Later, a pair of gowns that looked effortlessly draped until you spotted the ways they were cunningly constructed — a gold ring at the shoulder, a hidden seam along the side — nodded to the work of Jeanne Lanvin in the 1930s.

“We can’t move forward without paying homage to them,” Ayissi said.

Launch Gallery: Imane Ayissi Spring 2025 Couture

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