Matthew M. Williams on Alyx, Givenchy and Life in Fashion

could you tell people that don't know just a bit about where the name alixs comes from alixs is my daughter's name and there was an there's another British designer named Matthew Williamson so when I was starting my brand uh I was like I'm going to call if I call it my own name people are going to get confused with this other designer the next personal name I could think of was a leaks yeah I remember the first show because that collection it wasn't developed for a show like there's a different development process when I'm repeating looks or concepts or Silhouettes there's like a process to uh creating a collection for show and continuity of color and fabrics but that first elak show I didn't know I was going to show and I had a friend named albon that still works with us that um he's French and from Paris and he was like I I think we can gather a good crew and some friends of mine that are production fashion production and find a space and get everybody to band together to do the show and it was really something that my group of friends all rallied together and helped create for me which I'm super grateful for and everyone showed up you know which was which was great so and then after you you've done it then the whole company and the whole team believes oh we can do it you know and then it became something that we had that momentum to keep showing I look back fondly at those beginning years where everyone was contributing to El leaks to just create for the sake of creation you know and all the people that did work for the brand and created projects with me because they believed in the project and they were paid in the Fulfillment of the creativity they were producing I'm I'm eternally grateful to all of you it feels good to be actually back at that place today you know with the the investment in Al leaks and moving the brand from Milan to Paris and now I'm spending time between London and Paris to spend more time with my two daughters that live here there's a a restructuring and a kind of I don't the right word for it is it's like a there's a calmness right now and a rebuild that that again it feels like a new beginning but it's very refreshing and exciting and it reminds me of that beginning time where I'm looking around and seeing like who's with me who's ready to go I was it moving to Paris for Javon where you became creative director in 2020 that was of course the year the pandemic kit iov moved during a lockdown and for for a long time I was working in the studio with mass with tiny teams and you know we weren't able to show it was it was a really surreal experience I had such a great experience that goni and the teams and the group are incredible and I I only have positive things to say about everyone there also just discovering and learning about a brand as historic as Joni from the inside out you know spending time with Uber's family they they they told me so many amazing things time with the archive um the resources that are available to one at a house uh to create beautiful clothing the teams that are so talented that help realize those ideas how are you approaching innovation in that context the TK 360 shoe oh yeah that was that was a a patented uh shoe development that we did where um we created a mold that would emboss the sole to a 360 nit upper so you have the the knit shoe with a pu yarn that when you emboss the bottom it melts the yarn and creates a pu so I always start with material first it's always like lots of fabric swatches for whatever I'm working on and then you know those get applied to to drapes or vintage pieces or photoshops or tws and um just having all those materials on the floor it's really inspiring so there was this little piece of material that was for a football boot and it was for you know like control for a soccer cleat that it had these like melted bumps on the upper and they were really raised and I was like oh what if this was just the the soul why couldn't we just melt it the other direction and it would be all one material and it took a lot of development um and combining different factories knouse to create a new supply chain for it but I thought it was really really great and it was cool to do something like that at goni because uh maybe at had a sportsware brand I wouldn't have been able to do that because it doesn't have the wear test or it doesn't have an application for sport but in fashion it it doesn't have to have that uh use so it's much more free to use some of these materials and and explore form and shape in a different way you know there's another shoe coming out with Nike soon that's all around treadmill running so when I was running in Co um I was running on the treadmill all the time and some of the shoes I were I was running in had a lot of Bounce in it because they were designed for running outside and then I realized to my knowledge there hasn't been a a running shoe that was designed just for indoor running just for treadmill so I proposed that to Nike and we started working on an innovation around treadmill running so that that shoe is coming from process of me being like I need this I want this thing to exist this is innovation let's explore um this form following function how do you balance kind of something being both a creative project and a personal outlet with being a business there's definitely been years that have have been really difficult M for me to find that pure creative outlet that I felt like I once had through fashion one thing I did was I started just working in other creative mediums like I started making music with my friends um photography also stuff that I didn't really need to collaborate with other people sometimes I envy a painter that can just sit down at a canvas and do a painting started gardening I got really into flowers and cooking all great creative Outlets but I with fashion there's it's such a collaboration with so many people and so many layers um sometimes of one one piece of the the Jenga puzzle falls out it just becomes you're just it's really difficult you know you're on a on a tight rope and I think everyone experiences that and I also think it's a reason why in our industry it's not so exciting for the most part is because there's business people thinking that they know better than the designers and the the designers aren't given a a platform or an ability to to create and show their work in an open space or even that product have a chance to even go into the stores for people to buy you mentioned that you're making music yourself and you've got a little Studio setup in your apartment what kind of music are you making I don't know how to describe it it's like cinematic I don't know experimental but you know my friend twas he goes uh by Yi YSI which means number nine in Finish he's really the the architect of the sound I'm in there working with him and and giving ideas and I'm learning more as I'm working with him we'll see if I'll ever put it out right now it's just therapy for me and I wanted to ask you how aware and self-aware you are of how you shape or present yourself publicly as a public figure I really just work and then spend time with my family I have a very small group of friends that I spend time with I'm not really out in public that often except when I'm traveling I don't have Instagram I don't spend time on social media or anything like that I have an assistant that does posts for me or checks the DM of of a brand or somebody's writing me I don't think people really know who I am in a real way you know very very few people do I have felt in the past with certain articles and um things people have said that they they really had the wrong idea about me and that that idea was very was was transmitted at a very large scale and so I feel now like if I ever would want something to be more on point it's kind of on me to be a little bit more open and and show people who I am and my ideas and thoughts about things outside of fashion it's just hard with these contracts because with with these big companies the companies that I work for you sign these contracts that if you say one thing that goes wrong on social media you can be liable and and sued and it's like a silencing contract you know and I've had that for a decade how do you kind of create a space for yourself to kind of deal with that I mean we spoke a bit of camera about the idea of rituals and kind of things that you do yeah kind of and how your lifestyle has changed ation changed my life um it was maybe when I was 30 there was so much pressure and work and taking care of the kids it was just suggested to try meditating to to you know help with the the stress and pressure and anxiety I was experiencing at at that time I just feel like I didn't have enough energy to get through the day and then you know I started being consistent about it doing it twice a day and month after month um it I started to see myself change and the world around me change and uh and then maybe a year after that I decided to stop drinking and then that was like a really big shift in my life as well and I think meditation in a way also it cleared space over time and it's still doing that every day that it's bringing more people and experiences into alignment the uh for my life and also as has had me be okay with letting go of certain people and experiences I haven't been this happy in years which is great um to have space just to create do things spend time with the people that I want to spend time with go time to go visit suppliers again and develop with them can we talk a bit about how collaboration has been kind of an outlook for mentorship for you as well there are a younger generation of creatives and musicians that um I'm inspired by that that work with me on projects or uh collaborate and create imagery or music for El leaks and other projects that I'm working on and that's exciting that dialogue with with others that you're inspired by it pushes things you know and I love that El leaks can be that it can be an outlet and a support to to create work for other people too collaborations are incredible to enter into your process in new ways one gets in a loop sometimes of creating in a system and it's nice to try to break that Loop and enter into the creative process in a different way to yield another result I think most people now would describe you as a fashion designer but how do you feel about that label the work that I produce is through the lens of fashion but what's so beautiful about fashion is that it's an all-encompassing medium right so you have music for the shows architecture if you're doing stores or popups there's collaborations with artists so many different elements it's really uh a total sensory work when I started discovering fashion it was also through going out I would see how people were dressed at a nightclub um and also I would get dressed up to go out you know to dance or to DJ um and then when I first started going to show shows and they weren't live streamed or put on the internet I would hear music that I had never heard before and even you know so many people I respected I would love the soundtracks of those shows like I loved all the the H slain soundtracks and um different friends in New York that would that would do unique music for the shows I remember when we sent Bad Romance to McQueen for pl's Atlantis that was a huge moment and the songs also changed the feeling of the show so much and I I loved Fashion's connection to music in that way so when I started showing it became really important to curate and sometimes commission or co-create the soundtracks it puts this electric feeling in the air creativity is tapping into the same Source in my opinion whether you're making a song or creating a painting or having an idea for a dress or a jacket or shoes whatever it is creativity is is being in this state where you're connecting to like a source energy I don't know how to describe it any other way so you can label me as a fashion designer but I I can apply that creativity to to whatever I'm working on I want to ask you why why you decided to start a fashion brand I wanted to be known for the ideas that were mine rather than the ideas that I was creating for other people um that had a lot of visib that had a lot of visibility so it felt important to do work that was really authentic to me that had my own voice and so I wanted to start a project that was very personal and allowed space for me to include all of the interests in my life before I had the money to start my own brand I would do product development and production for other brands so when I was living in New York I would do freelance for women's wear Brands like running the designs of the designer um with a sample room or or factory so I got to learn about women's wear through creating others designs and then I was always excited about women's wear whether that was fashion photography or looking at shows going into stores and um looking at women's clothes and the the women around me too have always been really inspiring friends and family how they dress what they're interested in and just that dialogue um and I always wanted to do both so I felt might as well start with uh the most difficult Mountain de climb first which would be like being a respected women's wear designer I felt the the men's path would be a little bit more palatable for everyone because I'm a man I could talk about um the clothes being authentic to how I want to dress and what I want to wear whereas with the the women's wear um it was much more about you know dialogue with the women around me and what they're interested in and reaction to women I'm inspired by what was the intention behind that first kind of women's were relaks collection I didn't have any intention it's the Fashion's just been something that I felt like I had to do to be happy since I was a teenager it's it's the only job I've ever had was making clothes in various forms so even today if you ask me what the goal is for El leaks there's no goal it's just to continue creating and creation through the lens of a project that's very personal to me and the intention was more just to have an outlet for ideas for myself and friends and other creatives that would like to collaborate on projects you know for it to be a collective proposition um and and be a reflection of now when I started my brand I already had been working with Nick for around 5 years on really large project and so and he had become a close friend and I wanted to I felt like he also really knew me and knew the kind of work that I wanted to create so um at that time we didn't have enough money to do shows and him and I were talking and we spoke about you know these cataloges that he used to create for yoi or Jill sander back in the day and how how beautiful they were and it was a way to have mood from from a brand and I loved print I loved printing so we decided to work on this project with a a great art director named Paul heatherington that helped produce all the printing for the cataloges and we developed special paper special layout special printing techniques and even photographed and filmed the the videos and imagery for the cataloges with how the images would be printed in mind which is a really cool process a lot of people love to pinhole you especially during that time as a street wear designer that's kind of the term they liked to give you how would you kind of describe the clothes at that time sometimes it's labeled when one has a connection to Street culture or rap music and before I started El leaks I was also doing a lot of work for stucy and I had done work with Supreme with the Gaga shoot so there was connections to to Street Wear and also uh I love rap music and did a lot of work with with rappers and different artists so it was maybe easy to categorize my work in that in that way but it's also something I'm really proud of I'm proud of um Street Wear that's a huge part of my upbringing an interest I still wear Supreme you know it's a brand I love I love stucy it makes sense it's it's a big part of my my lineage how did Men's Wear come into the mix in relation to kind of the eles woman at this period Well men started just wearing the women's clothes that was like an interesting thing before we did Men's Wear guys just started buying the the women's clothes and I and I was like okay I have to start making fits big enough and and scaled properly for guys to wear or PE people are going to think the clothes the men the men are wearing are my Men's Wear there were so many guys that were just wearing the women's clothes which was cool too but it was it was also a it was uh it was confusing to stores and stuff sometimes they were like well can we buy this for men's and I was like well it's just a women's wear brand maybe we could talk a bit about the roller coaster Buckle which is your logo in a way the Buckle was something I found when I was at Six Flags Magic Mountain with my kids and it was just on one of the rides and I was like this thing is very cool and I looked at where it was created and contacted the company and uh the company was in Austria and it was a few hour drive from where I was living in Italy so I went and visited them and they were open to to work together and I that idea of repurposing something that wasn't used for fashion mhm and applying it to Fashion um you know the steel is different than what what kind of metal would normally be used in fashion hardware and there was a a feeling and sound when it opened and closed that I had an emotional connection to we've done lots of different variations of it and I've created created um a similar buckle for Dior and there's many Brands out there that do things that are inspired by um that original Buckle but AES is so much more than a buckle it's a blessing and a curse because sometimes you you one gets labeled like this is the the Buckle brand but if you really get into the brand uh there's a lot of things to dive into he opinion does matter to you about your work just my own my work and personal life was being scrutinized by people that didn't take a second to actually know me as a person or understand the work a close friend of mine um he gave me some good advice and he's an artist he was like you know if you don't read the good reviews and you don't care about the good words that everyone says then it also doesn't give as much weight to the to the bad reviews and so so I thought it was so great and I decided to just remain neutral around all compliments and negativity because it gets so convoluted at the end of the day you only know your history I'd rather be known for Stuff being beautifully made with thought and care and subtleties that you can tell it's touched by hand and last and you feel intention and love put into the garments and have it look like nothing else that exists you can't take away the time and energy that needs to be put into things to make it well you know to make it good there's no you can't like call that in or delegate that it just it comes with the time spent doing the thing

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Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024