Alix Higgins, the Australian Designer Merging Human and Digital Realities
Worn by the likes of Hunter Schafer and Grimes, Alix Higgins eponymous model is a joyous but tender ode to what it means to be human in at present’s day and age
- Who’s it? The eponymous label of Australian designer Alix Higgins
- Why do I need it? Daring, conceptual prints that fantastically merge our human and digital realities
- The place can I discover it? Alix Higgins is obtainable by the designer’s personal web site in addition to at Café Forgot, Distal Phalanx, Error404 and Blonde
Who’s it? As a teen rising up in small-town Australia, designer Alix Higgins fell in love with the infinite potential of the world large net. “I used to be simply obsessive about the mythology of the web and the depth of it,” he reminisces, “As a queer individual in distant Australia, to share this inside digital world with others was fairly particular.” It was by the patchworked visuals of Tumblr that Higgins, who initially dreamed of turning into an actor, found trend, “this wonderful world that was so removed from my small city outdoors of Sydney.” In contrast to appearing, wherein you give your self as much as a personality, trend “felt like this drama of the on a regular basis.” It was fantastical with out dropping contact with actuality; performative whereas sustaining the self. “In order that was the enchantment initially,” he muses. “And that’s why I’m nonetheless right here. The magic nonetheless hasn’t gone away.”
Higgins’ conception of trend continues to be closely anchored in picture. However his undergraduate research in Trend and Textile Design on the College of Expertise, Sydney, adopted by his MA on the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris, helped develop his visible obsession past imagery and into a definite sensitivity for textile and print. After honing his craft as a textile designer/marketing consultant at Marine Serre and Coperni amongst different manufacturers, Higgins returned to Sydney to launch his personal label – and pointedly made picture, from presentation to print, the beating coronary heart. “After I begin a brand new assortment, I don’t solely take into consideration the brand new shapes of the season, but additionally about what are the brand new prints and materials and gildings,” he says. “Plus, I simply actually love color.”
At a time when digital expertise, like synthetic intelligence and digital metaverses, is more and more pitted because the nemesis to our emotional human selves, the arrogance of Higgins’ daring prints and razor-edged tailoring are a much-needed reassurance that we’re nonetheless in management. For his debut assortment, A Reward from the Fall, fashions (his associates) clad in his iconic prints comprised of ink-cartridge-esque gradients, unashamedly digitalised polka dots, and blotted florals, walked barefoot by a sparse, concrete desert. It was an odyssey of types, a reminder that for all our screen-hazed days, we are going to nonetheless arrive right here in our current, multi-dimensional, human our bodies – and that’s a stupendous place to be.
Why do I need it? From the form-fitting second-skin bodycon tops to the uneven, razor-edged draping of his skirts and clothes, Higgins’ clothes are a joyous but tender ode to what it means to be human in at present’s day and age. The factitious-hued gradient prints, punctuated by ambiguous, gently blurred textual content, are sartorial screens that look inward to our advanced internal landscapes but additionally flip outwards: the benefit of each the form-fitting and draped silhouettes enable the wearer to reside their life by them, finishing the poetry of the open-ended textual content with their very own lived expertise. Trend can usually capitalise on our insecurities – garments promise to reinforce, to fulfil, to guard, to incorporate – however Higgins’ designs meet us as people the place we’re, excellent in all our variations.
Actually, lengthy earlier than his trend follow, Higgins had been documenting his personal reckoning with what it means to be alive: maintaining observe of experiences, influences, and observations that ultimately developed into lengthy poems. “Now I take into consideration sharpening the poems, developing them, and giving them time within the assortment,” he says, “the wedding of shapes, color, print, and textual content is essentially the most fascinating factor for me.” Except for enjoying with bigger, and loaded, figuring out labels reminiscent of ‘child’ and ‘fairy’, the designer hides snippets of his poetry in inconspicuous locations. “It’s a secret little factor from me to the wearer, as individuals can’t see them once they take {a photograph} for Instagram,” he explains of those mild encouragements for the wearer to take the time to get to know the garment intimately.
Till his first assortment, Higgins grew his label piece-by-piece by way of his personal web site. However even now, as he prepares for his upcoming present in Might this yr, the designer remains to be extremely involved with making a by line of approachable but elevated items that keep related from season-to-season. “That’s what I actually attempt to imbue my model with: a way of belonging and immortality, that that is ceaselessly,” he says. “I simply need individuals to take the clothes into their lives – it doesn’t cease with one season and begin with the subsequent.”
The place can I discover it? Alix Higgins is obtainable by the designer’s personal web site in addition to at Café Forgot, Distal Phalanx, Error404 and Blonde.
