Akris S/S 2022: The woman with an apron

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Oct 4, 2021

Working out how to dress women for the post-Covid era has exercised the minds of all designers this season. Most notably at Akris, a house which dresses many of the women who guide corporations and international organizations.

 
A key solution has been to create a new professional wardrobe of dresses and lighter jackets – and not suits – granting women the sense of style and authority that these ladies require.
 
For the S/S 2022 Akris collection, the key idea stemmed from its designer Albert Kriemler’s childhood, as he spent the first decade of his life living with his grandmother.

“As soon as she finished breakfast, she put on an apron to be ready for the day ahead, to be more resilient. I believe the era of the power suit is over and we have to offer women a different set of solutions. Clothes that make them ready for life and for their career,” explained Kriemler in a chat in the Swiss brand’s Paris headquarters.
 
Using pristine white poplin made of tightly wound threads, Kriemler suggested the apron with an elegantly wrapped lower half, or finishing his favorite double faced cotton with light apron front details on a spring frock.

 
Grandmother Alice actually founded Akris back in 1922, sewing aprons from St. Gallen fabrics and embroideries. Akris has grown to become the Chanel of Switzerland, but that has not prevented a little thrifty Swiss ecological thinking when it comes to fabrics. 
 
Kriemler showed a series of very distinguished broken-pattern guipure lace dresses and super light summer jackets in burnt orange and tobacco that came from his own deadstock. Add in chestnut nappa leather jackets and some smartly cut wide leg pants in linen/wool mixes or nappa leather and you had a multi-option collection of real class. No wonder American retailers have always loved Albert. 
 
For evening drinks, a cotton dress finished entirely with a beautiful image of an Alpine lake where Kriemler used to hike with his mum, was very beautiful.

 
Concerns about Covid meant Akris unveiled his ideas in the third fashion video of the pandemic, an elegant blend of drone shots and film noir camera angles shot in the Roter Platz, or Red Square, of Albert’s hometown of St. Gallen. A blood-red space, which artist Pipilotti Risi and architect Carlos Martinez created to feel like a public living room.
 
Directed by Damien Krisl, the fashion flick captures the new twist on restrained elegance that is Akris’ DNA. Plus, the collection points the way forward to other designers on how to dress women for the post-suit era.