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Behind Pre-Fall 2024
“Aeyde Elemente” Pt. 01

In Conversation with Luisa Dames
Words: Meghan Costelloe
Date: 18.07.2024
As Aeyde launches its Pre-Fall 2024 collection, Meghan Costelloe speaks with founder and creative director Luisa Dames. In this conversation, Luisa riffs on the Fall/Winter 2024 season, the dimension and nuance underpinning new-season designs, and the significance behind the house’s running ‘red thread’ theme.

MC: How are you feeling now that the Pre-Fall 2024 collection has launched?

LD: Super excited because it’s the first season where the conceptual side of the brand ties in so closely with the commercial, design, and editorial side. It was planned and executed to the most minute detail, so I think it’s Aeyde’s most cohesive collection yet.

MC: “Aeyde Elemente” is the season’s overarching concept. How did you decide on this?

LD: Defining a theme for an entire season is always important. This theme does so much for the house but mainly drives design decisions. Bauhaus and Brutalism were the initial threads, but they are hard to translate into concepts. We found the word “elemente” (the German version of the English ‘element’), which is what Bauhaus and Brutalism are essentially, right? On my team, we spoke about the essence of these design movements stemming from rough simplicity and an almost ascetic design sensibility, for example, using concrete as a material. From there, we dissected the collection into its compounds and composites, allowing us to explore different elements per drop.

There are a lot of different pieces in the Fall/Winter collection, but if we look at Pre-Fall, we will release a capsule of caged styles based on Aeyde’s evolved Uma and Aline signatures. Really, our representation of what you often see in cities like Berlin is a constant state of construction. Berlin is a city in a state of continuous construction and, in a way, disruption. So it’s exciting to play with those elements and to really have a portrait of Berlin in a shoe–or many shoes–essentially.

MC: Where do you start when designing a Fall/Winter collection? Does your creative process differ when designing a winter collection as opposed to a summer collection?

LD: Whatever the season, it’s the same process. With design, repetition is extremely important. You define, evolve, and adhere to your phases: the concepting, the sketching, the prototyping, and the editing. And there are, of course, the environmental and industry-wide factors, too. We absorb trends and general tendencies around us. We really build the first fundamentals for the developing collection, and then comes the main stage: seeing it through, dissecting it, and coming up with new ideas that hopefully resonate with our customers.

The brand generally has a firm rooting in boots, so they should be available all year round because that’s technically what we’re known for. Even if you go more to the northern regions, you can have cold days even in summer, and you may want to wear over-the-knee boots with a super floral summer dress. For me, fashion is trans-seasonal–increasingly so with the global changes we're seeing recently. So, I think that’s a super important element: we create a collection that is almost like an evergreen wardrobe component.

MC: Last season, you spoke about the increasing richness of Aeyde’s construction and selection of leathers. Is this intentional with every new collection?

LD: At Aeyde, we always have this under-layer of interesting materials, with our snake-effect styles, for example. We continue to feel that our snake prints are so strong, so much so that we now have a cream and a hazelnut–and a super-nice moka for the Fall/Winter season. The mandate is always to be refined–the Aeyde look is quite clean–but you want this little frisson of something to look slightly more elevated than your day-to-day look. It’s almost like Aeyde’s input of texture amidst a mostly minimal palette.

MC: In terms of design and visual language, the house’s signature red thread has morphed into a running theme throughout this collection. What does red signify for Aeyde?

LD: There has always been this red thread, which is our sign for handmade quality. We have this integration on Aeyde shoes and the ballerinas. And this season, we saw that red is really coming through strongly, so we wanted to set the tone and created the Cerys and Judi pumps. They solidify the idea that red means power. It’s a fine line to work with red, but we transmute it in a very nuanced way, using a sexy color and an elegant finish. If you look at the red, it’s very dimensional in the softest kid suede. The term dimensional we’re applying to everything we’re doing this season–whether it’s the concept, the storyline, or, most importantly, the design underpinning the collection.

Shop Pre-Fall 2024 here.

Read More:

Pre-Fall 2024 Editorial

“Aeyde Elemente” Pt. 01

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