WITH A GLOBE-TROTTER'S TROVE OF
RICHES, HAIDER ACKERMANN FINDS HIS PLACE
IN THE FASHION FIRMAMENT.
ARMAND LIMNANDER REPORTS.
It's hard to know exactly when a designer goes from newcomer
to trendsetter. Occasionally, fashion catches up to an aesthetic that was ahead of its time. Or a season gravitates toward specific
style quirks. Sometimes it’s just plain luck. In any event, and
for whatever reason, it seems clear that Haider Ackermann is
making that jump.
Ackermann started showing in Paris in 2002 and almost immediately became a cult favorite. After his debut, he was tapped by the Italian leather company Ruffo, which at the time invited young talents to design its experimental Ruffo Research line. (Raf Simons and Sophia Kokosalaki were also Ruffo Researchers.) Ackermann received encouraging reviews and quietly started building a community of fans. In 2004 he got a leg up after winning the Swiss Textiles Award at the Gwand fashion festival in Lucerne , which included a prize of 100,000 euros (about $133,000 at the time) that gave him some room to grow. In 2005 he guest-edited an issue of A Magazine, featuring work by Steven Klein, Cris Brodahl and Roger Ballen, among others. Last year he curated an exhibition at Villa Noailles, as part of the Hyères fashion festival in the South of France.
It was Ackermann’s fall 2009 presentation, however, that fully showed off his maturity. The elements he has been developing for years were all there: rich, moody colors; lots of draping; sexily distressed leather jackets. But there was also a new rigor in his mannishly tailored jackets, and a sure hand in the burnished gold sequins and seductive Indian- and African-inspired embroideries. They were the kind of clothes worn by women whose sense of confidence does not depend on vanity or effort — which explains why Ackermann’s friend Tilda Swinton slunk onto the red carpet
at the Cannes Film Festival, a few months after the show,
wearing one of his dresses.
‘‘I can’t actually remember first meeting Haider,’’ Swinton says. ‘‘I’m guessing it was in super-off-duty circumstances, possibly singing Chinese karaoke, but it was about seven years ago. I have been wearing his clothes since I first saw them. He has become a very good friend, and we feel in close sync in terms of general sensibility.’’ Safe to say that Swinton's style is anything but prissy: ‘‘There is something very louche about Haider’s dresses — they feel like good dresses to be completely at ease in.’’
Ackermann was born in Colombia but was adopted by French parents and lived a peripatetic childhood. His father was a cartographer, and his work took the family to Iran , Chad , Ethiopia and Algeria before Ackermann was 12; they then moved to the Netherlands . That early nomadism had a formative effect on Ackermann’s work. ‘‘When you live so many years abroad, you belong nowhere,’’ he says. ‘‘So for this collection I had the idea of a woman who was traveling, going somewhere from nowhere, taking all her treasures with her, like a little soldier.’’
When Ackermann moved to Antwerp in 1994 to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, broody and cerebral Belgians like Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester were very much in vogue. ‘‘You can imagine how I felt when I was a boy living in Africa seeing all the glittering gold and all the different colors,’’ Ackermann says. ‘‘My initial aesthetic was built on that, but then I went to Belgium and everything was dark and gray, and I became attracted to the complete opposite. Now I try to combine both elements.’’
Early on, Ackermann reached out to Raf Simons, who was then Antwerp ’s rising superstar, for advice. ‘‘I thought Haider was one of the most modernist people at the academy, but he didn’t graduate because he could never finish his collections,’’ Simons says. ‘‘But to me it made complete sense. If he had to do five silhouettes, he would only do three, but they were the best. I felt Haider was very serious.’’ Ackermann interned for John Galliano while he was in school;
after that, he did some commercial design work in Belgium before settling down in Paris to create his own line. ‘‘He has developed his own signature, and thinks in terms of silhouettes, which is an
almost old-school way of working,’’ adds Simons. ‘‘He likes doing everything himself.’’
Another key person in Ackermann’s development has been Anna Chapelle, who brought him into her company — which is called 32 and also includes Ann Demeulemeester — in 2006. ‘‘Haider came to my house on a beautiful Saturday morning, rang my door and asked me to help him,’’ Chapelle says. ‘‘I said, ‘But who are you?’ ’’ They soon got to know each other, and Ackermann won Chapelle over: ‘‘I loved the way he expressed himself. He was drawing for me, and I trusted his hand.’’ Chapelle says that Ackermann has been on track with the business plan she laid out for him (breaking even in three years, recouping her investment in five) and that his business grew by 43 percent last year.
It helps explain why rumors have been swirling for months that Ackermann would be taking over Maison Martin Margiela, which
has been considered the holy grail of conceptual design for the
past 20 years. When queried about the speculation, he
sidesteps: ‘‘When you meet the person you have admired for
so many years, how can you possibly replace him? Sometimes
it’s better never to meet your heroes.’’
That doesn’t mean, however, that he wouldn’t be open to other possibilities, as long as he was able to continue designing under his own name. Intriguingly, Ackermann likes the idea of a house with a different sensibility from his. ‘‘You have your own repertoire, to which you are attached, but sometimes you have something else to say, and the code of another house might help you do that,’’ he says. ‘‘I would love to share another aesthetic, but it would have to be the right house. And the right timing.’’
For now, Ackermann seems content solidifying his own vocabulary. ‘‘He will always try to find the summum of the most beautiful woman,’’ Chapelle says. ‘‘That is his search: how to make her stronger and more powerful.’’ Swinton, for one, agrees. ‘‘There is something so utterly ancient and modern about his work — the grace and fluidity of the weight and line, the timelessness of his palette,’’ she says. ‘‘His clothes have the true elegance of eternal Berber tribal dress as
worn on the chicest and most enterprising starship from the
future. Supersonic anthropology.’’
It’s hard to argue with that.
