ALAINPAUL at the Opéra National de Paris
Patrick Michael Hughes
ALAINPAUL’s costume designs are currently featured at the Opéra national de Paris.
Contrastes, is a program of contemporary ballet running through December 31, 2025. The evening brings together works by four choreographers, each proposing a distinct style and resonance. Collectively, the program functions as an immersion into contemporary choreographic language.
Drift Wood, choreographed by the collaborating duo Imre van Opstal and Marne van Opstal. Which is set to the musical architecture of Amos Ben Tal. The dance explores the tension between what is residual and what remains elemental in human nature. This opposition sits at the core of the costume concept realized by ALAINPAUL. The designer looked to the metaphor of ‘driftwood’ a material shaped by time and tide. The costumes communicate endurance, erosion and transformation. The dance has been photographed by Benoîte Fanton. In addition, the painterly photographic eye of Tom Visser further framed the dance in a sequence of quiet, poetic dioramas.
…an atmosphere of muted depth
The set concept was also devised by the choreographers, with lighting executed by Tom Visser and assisted by Ivan Cascon. Visser constructed an atmosphere of muted depth, using illumination to suggest a woodland space animated by shifting light and shadow. The approach echoes current practices in the current generation of landscape painting and photography. The result recalls an atmospheric, Rembrandt like form of contrast. The result further aligns movement, sound and image around the dance’s investigation of vulnerability.
The work’s momentum unfolds as a gradual removal of the constructed self, revealing fragments of instinct and resistance. As the choreographic statement notes: “What emerges is a play between the raw and the constructed. The private and the prescribed, the solitude we carry and the bonds we cannot escape.” The piece asks what remains when identity is stripped back ? What is shaped by external forces? and what endures as one’s own?
Conceptual extensions of the dancers’ movement
These themes therefore are intensified through sound. Salvador Breed, the Dutch spatial sound designer and composer known for collaborations with Iris Van Herpen and Nick Knight, provides the aural framework. Within this calibrated environment, ALAINPAUL’s costumes firstly operate as material extensions of the dancers’ movement, carrying simultaneous readings of fragility and resilience.
For ALAINPAUL, Drift Wood marks a return to a formative discipline. Trained at the École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille before turning to fashion, his early grounding in dance continues to inform the design language of the house he co-founded with his husband, Louis Philippe, in 2023. The collections are consistently conceived as a choreography of fabric, body, and gesture.
full-circle articulation
In conclusion, the costumes for Drift Wood align with the sculptural clarity and precision that define the ALAINPAUL aesthetic. Therefore the project functions as a full-circle articulation, uniting the designer’s foundation in ballet with his ongoing practice in fashion.
ALAINPAUL website
DRIFT WOOD
@imrevanopstal.marnevanopstal
@imrevanopstal @marnevanopstal
Performed by @balletoperadeparis
choreography @imrevanopstal.marnevanopstal
concept direction @imrevanopstal.marnevanopstal
costume design @alainpaul
music amos ben-tal @offprojects @sssalvadorrr
sound design @sssalvadorrr
light design @tomvisserdesign
set @imrevanopstal.marnevanopstal @tomvisserdesign
assistant choreography @chloe_albaret
company @balletoperadeparis
photography @benoitefanton
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Patrick Michael Hughes is a fashion and decorative arts historian. He writes about fashion culture past and present making connections to New York, London and Copenhagen's fashion weeks with an eye toward men's fashion. He joined IRK Magazine as a fashion men's editor during winter of 2017.
He is often cited as a historical source for numerous pieces appearing in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, LVMH, Conde Nast, Highsnobiety and others. His fashion career includes years as a fashion reporter/producer of branded content for the New York local news in the hyper digital sector. Patrick's love of travel and terrain enabled him to becoming an experienced cross-country equestrian intensively riding in a number of locations in South America Scandinavia,The United Kingdom and Germany. However, he is not currently riding, but rather speaking internationally to designers, product development teams, marketing teams and ascending designers in the US, Europe and China.
Following his BA in the History of Art from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York he later completed graduate studios in exhibition design in New York. it was with the nudge and a conversation in regard to a design assignment interviewing Richard Martin curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art he was encouraged to consider shifting his focus to the decorative arts with a concentration in fashion history and curation.
Patrick completed graduate studies 17th and 18th century French Royal interiors and decoration and 18th century French fashion culture at Musée Les Arts Decoratifs-Musée de Louvre in Paris. Upon his return to New York along with other classes and independent studies in American fashion he earned his MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from the Parsons/Cooper Hewitt Design Museum program in New York. His final specialist focus was in 19th century English fashion and interiors with distinction in 20th century American fashion history and design.
Currently, he is an Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons School of Design leading fashion history lecture-studios within the School of Art and Design History and Theory,
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