Auralee stages striking debut show at Paris Fashion Week Men

With Auralee, Paris Fashion Week Men has added a fine new name to its calendar. The Japanese label’s debut show on Tuesday, the fashion week’s opening day, proved that Auralee has fully earned its place in the prestigious menswear event. The label’s finely poised new collection reinterpreted everyday wardrobe essentials, placing the emphasis on lavish materials developed in-house.

Kobe-born Ryota Iwai, 40, founded his men’s and women’s ready-to-wear label in 2015 in Tokyo, where it operates two stores. In 2019, Auralee joined the Paris menswear week’s presentation programme, confidently carving out a niche for itself.

For his label’s first runway show, Iwai focused on that special moment at the end of the working day, when people leave the office eager to return home, or with the bright prospect of an evening out, to see a show or meet their friends. Some have had time to swing by the dry cleaners to pick up their freshly ironed dinner outfit, others have shoved their down jacket or sweater in a bag, and some of them still have a lanyard with their office ID round their necks.

The models strolled down the runway with instinctive, elegant nonchalance, blending sophisticated outerwear with workwear - like the beige denim jacket seemingly cut from the thick canvas used to make traditional boiler suits - and with more classic business outfits like the comfy, generously proportioned suits.

Iwai has enjoyed mixing and layering garments and materials. A short tweed jacket with slightly rounded sleeves was worn over an ultra-soft hoodie, itself layered on a lightweight cashmere sweater. A mauve longline windbreaker was slipped over a gaberdine coat which in turn covered a suit. Sharp colours like red, turquoise and violet blended effortlessly with more natural shades.

Auralee presented superb pea jackets made in a new fabric, a terry-like reversible wool, alongside a down parka in alpaca, highly durable and lightweight. The coats were all impeccably cut, and a female model wore a feather-light mandarin-coloured cardigan under her suit’s jacket, instead of a shirt. The entire collection oozed quality, through the softness and fluidity of the garments.

Auralee manufactures its fabrics in-house, sourcing yarn and fibres from top suppliers all around the world: Peru for alpaca, New Zealand and Scotland for wool, and Mongolia for cashmere. The fabrics are then developed independently by Iwai in Japan, where the collection was produced. In a few years, Auralee has made a name for itself, and now employs 12 people, plus another 15 working in its stores. The label is distributed via some 100 multibrand retailers in Japan and another 110 abroad, notably in South Korea and the USA.

Labelling Iwai’s fashion as quiet luxury would be simplistic. As would be describing his garments merely as functional, given the level of care that goes into their details and quality. The soul of Iwai’s creations is his painstaking textile research. As he said himself, “fabrics make the clothes. I’m not interested in ostentation. My clothes simply allow people to be who they are.”

Auralee stages striking debut show at Paris Fashion Week Men

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