Alexander Matius and behind the scenes of the collection in a new document

Cannes Film Festival 2024: Eddie de Pretto, Leila Bekhti, Omar Sy, Catherine Deneuve, Melanie Laurent, Emmanuelle Béart and even Viola Davis present their dresses on the red carpet in revisited French chic style signed AMI. Flashback. Paris, January 2011 Alexandre Matiusi presents his first AMI ready-to-wear menswear collection at Macéo Café on rue Petits-Champs. 15 watching and as guests, friends, parents and a few journalists who already feel its potential.the boys next door» cool and stylish. Between the two dates, we measure the progress made.

Catherine, Isabelle, Vincent and others

A friend of Alexander Mattiusi, today there are 60 stores worldwide, 700 sales points, more than 600 employees and a logo composed of the A with a red heart recognized on all continents. It is also Catherine Deneuve, the icon of French elegance, who in 2021 became the ambassador of the house’s first signature bag. The designer paraded Audrey Tautou on his catwalks at the foot of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, causing a general buzz in 2022, but also Ana Girardot, Germaine Louvain, Isabel Adjani, Charlotte Rampling, Vincent Cassel. And at his latest mixed autumn/winter 2024-25 fashion show (his shows are now among the highlights of men’s fashion week), Diane Kruger, Lou Doillon and Letitia Casta all responded to his call. So it’s no coincidence that the forty-year-old designer is now the subject of a documentary that will premiere on June 16 in Paris.

Behind the scenes of creation

It was directed by Dominic Micheli. After his first opus Isabel Marant, Birth of a Collection, the director set his sights on Alexander Matiussi *. “I met Alexander at a party, he had just shown his first men’s collection,” she says. We hit it off. I loved what he did, the wearable fashion, the beautiful materials, and I immediately bought a men’s coat. I followed its evolution. After the Isabel Marant documentary, I wanted to continue this behind-the-scenes theme of creativity. Alexander was on my list. He was excited that we could do something together. The shoot was full of joy and kindness, and it was important for me to feel that on screen.”

So he followed her through the creation of her fall-winter 2024 collection, from the moment she arrived at his Paris office (“It’s great, I get to the Place Victoires every morning and I see Louis XIV’s butt,” she says amused in front of him.camera) until the big day of the show at the Paris Tennis Club in January 2024. The documentary begins with the selection of fabrics, colors, materials, and then accessories, continuing with matching sessions against the backdrop of Rihanna, Mariah Carey and Celine. Dion to the final fittings of D-4 in the company of Diane Kruger, Lou Doillon, Letitia Casta and Audrey Marne.

Casual look, hands in pockets

“We toured with Dominic Micheli’s team for six months. I find the result very true, it’s a real invitation to discover my daily life and the way I work, I’m very proud of it.
explains Alexander Mathius. We also discover a creator who is focused but full of humor, who has stayed true to his desire to have fun, and who hasn’t changed his DNA despite success. Her Ami fashion remains the usual classics, large, loose and stylish coats, oversized or furnished, but always imbued with flexibility, chic and sober monochrome, sometimes with a sexier and more glamorous look. In this casual look, with his hands in his pockets, which naturally makes him tell the story of this Parisian (he launched his first women’s line in 2018) at every fashion show, the envy of the whole world.

Paris is waking up

We also see him in a documentary where he narrates his set pitch to Diane Kruger. “The setting is the front of the building,” he explains, “it’s 5 o’clock and Paris is waking up, the residents are out on the streets, there’s a single mother on the fourth floor, the sexy neighbor that everyone fantasizes about… a little bit.” Window to the yard and more realistic.” Final sequence. backstage, where friends Juliette Binoche and Vincent Cassel, among others, come to greet her. “If you meet a guy like that on the street, you either want to kiss him, or you immediately integrate him into the group of friends,” he said in 2011, talking about the models in his first collection. Even if his friends today are no longer the same, we begin to think that this vision has not changed, and that is the main thing.

of Alexander Matius, Ami. birth of the collection