ALAINPAUL- AUDITION
Patrick Michael Hughes
ALAINPAUL Spring/Summer 2026
ALAINPAUL Spring/Summer 2026 shown during Paris Fashion Week investigates the act of dressing. It’s an action which has always carried a performative narrative. The designer frames it as an audition, an everyday rehearsal in which the body negotiates identity through fabric and form. For him, the dancer’s ritual—practice, repetition, correction—becomes a lens for understanding clothing as process, not simply presentation.
AlainPaul’s connection to this metaphor is direct. Trained at the École Nationale Supérieure de Danse de Marseille, he pursued dance with discipline from the age of nine until eighteen, when he turned to fashion as a more expansive language. His early sewing was functional—costumes for performance—but also exploratory, a way of shaping self-expression beyond the confines of choreography. “Dance was a bubble,” he recalls, “and fashion became the way I could assume who I was, stepping into the AlainPaul journey.” That background remains integral to the brand which he founded with his husband Louis Philippe in 2023. All of the brand’s collections are a choreography of fabric, body, and gesture.
His early professional experiences—VETEMENTS under Demna and Guram Gvasalia, followed by an encounter with Virgil Abloh—situated him at key turning points in contemporary fashion, where independent vision and cultural commentary converged. Yet his AlainPaul collections retain a personal focus: the discipline of dance as a method, a training ground for how clothes move, how they are worn, and how they speak.
“…when garments are pulled on and off…
For Spring/Summer 2026, AlainPaul looked back to the vulnerability of auditions in contemporary ballet. The collection shifted away from spectacle. Instead tracing the intimacy of what happens behind the curtain. When garments are pulled on and off, when the body is measured against itself rather than an audience. “It’s a more vulnerable part of myself,” he admitted, recalling his first audition at eight. “That state of always having to prove yourself, it mirrors how we move through the world every day. Much like how AlainPaul approaches fashion.”
The clothes pursued this dialogue through restraint. A pared-down palette and single-fabric explorations created the sensation of clothing as composition. Jackets became the central form. Structured around the torso, tailored with sculptural intensity, sometimes interrupted by the intrusion of a shirt collar or a slice of silk concealed in a lapel. Layers peeled away like corsetry, exposing the core of the body, recalling both the discipline of rehearsal and the fragility of costume. Vintage references, bloomers, hints of underpinnings and further emphasized that intimate, behind-the-scenes dimension.
Dance Heritage and Experimentation
AlainPaul also signaled lineage, motifs of poppies and carnations recalled Pina Bausch. The German, neo expressionist, choreographer who brought emotional depth and theatrical intensity to modern dance and sound design. Prints developed in collaboration with artist Cécile Feilchenfeldt extended the brand’s couture approach, embedding personal narrative in material form.
This AlainPaul collection marked a clear evolution firstly, a designer affirming his voice through discipline, vulnerability, and process. It stood as an argument for authenticity in fashion—clothing not as surface, but as rehearsal, repetition, and the shaping of identity in motion, much like AlainPaul envisioned.
Press Runway Photography by Luca Tombolini
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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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