Natalia Alaverdian is a ball of energy, an unsplit atom, a nail-biter. This collection of just under 50 looks felt like one of 150, so many ideas did it contain. As a long-term chronicler of her work in various disparate show venues (this one was a last-minute substitution) and showrooms (plus once a Starbucks) it is important to attest that her paneled and sludgily lumpen bags do indeed seem to have a close affinity to those being machine-gunned out from the beast that is Bottega Veneta. Daniel Lee is doing fabulous work and the similarity is for sure the coincidental parallel realization of two attuned minds, but Alaverdian has been totally mining this seam for a while now.
As often, Alaverdian turned to Soviet-era Russia as a source code for her collection. The sequined, tight-fitting hooded pieces put us on a Yuri Gagarin trajectory while the blue track jacket was a more personal nod to a garm beloved of Alaverdian’s father in the 1980s. She fired up the thrusters to orbit a Moscow-Cassiopeia vibe, then swapped ideologies as she transferred the puckered paneling of her bags into outerwear that hinted at 2001: A Space Odyssey. The liquid puckered lamé we saw at an early morning appointment in Paris for pre-fall mutated here into alien encrustations around the body which were, Alaverdian conceded, ferociously inspired by Ridley Scott’s sci-fi aesthetic. And on it went. You could see the tension in some of the garments between the strength of Alaverdian’s creative vision and the limitation of the technique her budget allows, which was a shame but also poignant. Were a big brand—Sportmax perhaps, after the excellent current “secret” designer runs through his contract—to come in for Alaverdian, it might be a wise move indeed.