Alexandre Mattuissi is the chic young French designer who decided that the modern gentleman is ready for a new sartorial idea
Born in 1980, Alexandre Mattuissi was only thirty years old when he launched his own label AMI Paris, ‘of real clothes for a real man’, last year. However, despite his comparative youth, Mattuissi boasts a considerable pedigree of expertise in design and men’s tailoring to back his seemingly exuberant confidence.
He studied at the world famous Duperrés school of applied fashion arts in Paris, specialising in menswear, before gaining his professional stripes at renowned houses including Dior, Givenchy and Marc Jacobs. With AMI however, Mattiussi wanted to rediscover the essential immediateness and durability of elegant clothes for men; ‘this collection is not about fantasy’, he says.
The brand also has a unique twist to its ethos that may sometimes be missing in the busier demi-mondes of the fashion stakes; Mattiussi explicitly stating that he wants his clothes to be inspired by the concept of friendship. Not only does AMI, composed of his initials and last letter of his name, translate as ‘friend’ in French, the clothes are designed with his own circle of friends in mind.
What emerges is a series of classic looks, infused with seductive contemporary edges, all bathed in an enduring allure of tasteful French charm. Mattitussi views the values of sincerity and authenticity so crucial to friendship as important to his own fashion outlook, and says: ‘a well-dressed man is someone who recognizes himself; someone who has found his own style and knows what suits him. His relation to clothing is sincere.’
Perhaps it is because of his own authentic allegiance to these values that AMI Paris is already enjoying the considerable value of customer loyalty from their forward-thinking clientèle.
View AMI Paris’s Spring/Summer collection at www.amiparis.fr
