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The Discreet Modernist
Akris’s Albert Kriemler is propelling his Swiss fashion house forward using a mix of innovation and simplicity. Valerie Steele gets to the root of his aesthetic.
To help us follow his threads of thought and inspiration, we asked Kriemler, whose book Akris (Assouline) is out this summer, to tell us about the artists and architects who influenced some of his recent collections. Click here to read the article.
July 2012
Franz Kline
(fall/winter 2012&nash2013)
After visiting MoMA’s Willem de Kooning exhibition last autumn, I began
to read more about the painter Franz Kline, who was a friend of de
Kooning’s. A few years earlier, I had seen Kline’s portrait of Vaslav
Nijinsky in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, and it made a lasting impression on
me. Kline’s wife was a ballet dancer suffering from schizophrenia— much
like Nijinsky himself. Kline, a true action painter, used paintbrushes
up to 25 centimeters thick for his strong strokes on the canvas. I
became intrigued and started to research his work more deeply, which is
how I found his dynamic Painting No. 7 (left), from 1952, a major
example of the verticals so important in Kline’s late work and,
eventually, the main point of reference for my newest collection. The
painting inspired me to do abstract photo prints in colors—its verticals
are represented in the sensual cashmere and silk&nashknit dresses in
charcoal, bottle green, and nude. Kline also informed the geometric
patchwork in a black and charcoal double-face cashmere-and-leather
motorbike jacket and cape.
July 2012
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