Alix Higgins is Making Clothes for Here and Now

Alix Higgins has been enjoying a change of pace. His newest collection, titled ‘I Forgive You God’, was created with speed in mind. Across the 47 garments, fingerprints disguised as polka dots appear on tank tops and sweatshirts, and poems and provocations materialise over draped scarves, polos and gowns. A few days after presenting his third consecutive runway at Australian Fashion Week, Higgins sat down with Jasmine Penman to talk about culture, community and language.
Jasmine Penman Congratulations on your recent runway at Australian Fashion Week. How do you feel now that you’ve had a weekend away to relax and decompress?
Alix Higgins I feel really good. This year in particular felt quite overwhelming.
JP How so?
AH I think that the weight of that room and the collection was just so big. But I also think that as my brand grows, the novelty has worn off in a sense. It’s kind of like, ‘Oh, this is my normal life now.’ It’s almost become more emotionally overwhelming because I’m not experiencing things for the first time anymore. The team is also a bit different this year. Some roles shifted around, which also made the mood feel really beautiful and strong.
JP Yeah, I remember you saying at the start of last year that it was going to be your first year working on the Alix Higgins brand full-time. Now that you’re working on the brand full time, has your design process changed?
AH A little bit. I mean, you know, the brand is something that financially sustains me now. For this collection, I was really thinking about people. I took on the role of styling the collection this time around. I thought, Well, I have the time now, and I know what I want to say with the clothes and how I want them to go together. Knowing that I was going to style the collection really changed my design process and made me think about the people who would wear these clothes and how they would wear them. So, my design process kind of became more tied to reality, while still maintaining that element of fantasy, which is really essential to my brand. Having more time to dedicate myself to the brand has also meant that the quality has become stronger. The interior of the quality is much more considered, much more beautiful and hopefully much more luxurious. It’s been nice to spend time draping this season, which is not something that I normally have time to do but is a great love of mine.
JP Yeah, the draping really stood out to me. It felt new. Have you always wanted to explore this technique?
AH I studied in Paris at a school called Institut Français de la Mode, and this is where we really focused on draping techniques. I really love the process, and I really love expressing myself in that way. It’s not something that I’m known for, so I wanted to bring that elegance and that couture spirit into something that is still very wearable and approachable. Just adding a simple twist to the construction can really change the shape of the outcome.
JP I feel like designers and artists are often pressured to create work that is new and fresh. Do you feel this pressure?
AH I definitely feel like people expect newness from me, but I find it exciting. I like being able to bring in an agenda. I don’t really see it as a pressure. I see it as like, Okay, what’s next? I’m ready to move forwards and surprise people and surprise myself. At the moment, I feel like I have a richness of ideas that I’m ready to explore within the context of the Alix Higgins brand, and that feels limitless.
JP You’re building upon what you’ve already created.
AH Yeah, and I speak to some young designers who really struggle with that pressure and the newness in that they’re like, “Oh, each year, I throw everything out and start from scratch.” And I just don’t think that it’s a sustainable way of working. Even just sustainable in terms of your own energy or building relationships with your customers. I have a customer that’s very fashion forward and very excited about my brand and ready to approach challenging garments. But at the same time, it’s a slow process. I find people like to see things a couple of times and have to understand how the shapes work for their body before they’re ready to jump in. If you’re throwing everything out and starting again every time the next season comes around, it’s not very nice to your customer. People like the way something fits or they like a fabrication, and they want to see change and development, but they don’t want to see this throwing out of the old. I have people who buy from me every season and they still wear things from three years ago, you know? It’s not outdated, and I think that that particular model of fashion, where you’re constantly updating and making your own products obsolete, is unfair to customers and unfair to the environment. I like the idea of my pieces being these special things that will last a long time.
JP You’ve said before that you like to work slowly; to take your time to feel things out. It seems like you’ve embraced a faster, more frenetic energy with this collection. What prompted this shift in pace?
AH Previously I have only worked on a single collection each year. But in January, I released a pre-collection called ‘Archery Practice’. The timing of releasing that collection really ate into the development time for this collection, which was both intentional and unintentional. There were some factors that pushed it back. I ended up with a really short timeframe to develop this collection. And I didn’t really want to pull it back and be like, “Wait, I can’t do this.” I was like, “No, this is going to be about using that speed as a tool in my design to not question myself and to move with confidence and to allow things to just be.” Every designer feels like they have less and less time to design every season. As your business grows, the marketing eats into this time, and the production eats into this time and the business side eats into this time. But I wanted to challenge myself and to see what would happen if I was creating under a different set of circumstances. I remember reading when I was younger about some Prada collections or some JW Anderson collections where they said, “Oh, you know, at the fabric mill, there was a disaster and so we made this whole collection in two weeks.” I mean, I had more than two weeks to design my collection, however, I’m a much smaller team compared to somewhere like Prada or JW Anderson. But I like those stories and the results that come out of them. I think that having less time to design this collection forced me to be quite open and radical and to not hide or self-censor too much.
JP Is it your instinct to self-censor?
AH No, not really. I actually think that I’m quietly confident in my work because I don’t really think too much about other people. I think about building a world and I think about my clients, but I’m not really thinking too much about other designers and other peoples’ successes. I never have understood imposter syndrome [laughs].
JP I love that.
AH I really haven’t, and it’s a blessing [laughs]. But the thing that does come up every season is this question of, how much of myself do I want to expose? I think about it especially in the context of my writing. It’s like, how personal should this collection be, or how obscure should it be? And how much should I mystify the work? This season, the text is quite direct and quite provocative. I think that if I had sat on it for another few months, I may have retreated.
JP It’s been a pleasure to watch the language that you’ve created for the brand grow and develop over time. How do you view the position of text within the context of your design practice? Is it essential to the Alix Higgins brand?
AH Yeah, it’s something that has been really essential to my design. In my life, I have always written in kind of poetic ways about what’s happening around me. And my brand is so much about me, so I just included this textual element from the beginning by instinct. It comes and goes in its weight in the collection. The first show was very heavy with text, but the second show was kind of in-between. My pre-collection in January was very light on text, actually.
It’s something that I struggle with because I’m like, will I run out of things to say one day? Like, will I run out of words, literally? Or is it a crutch that I lean on when I don’t need to? I’m not sure. For now, the text is something that I think adds so much weight and emotion to the pieces. It’s something that I don’t think you can really get in any other brand. I mean, there are people doing slogans and brands that are using poetry; but for my brand, the text is not a seasonal thing. It’s authentic and it’s essential, which is what sets it apart, I think.
JP It’s definitely something that helps to build a very tangible world.
AH I did an interview last week, and the title of the article was ‘Alix Higgins on selling the dream’. It seems very silly and cliché, but it’s true in a sense. I’d never phrase it in that way myself, but I am really interested in building this dream around my own brand. You know, it’s more than buying a t-shirt, it’s more than buying a little polo; it’s about joining something magical and tangible and real. The music plays a huge part in this, as well as the people that I work with. It’s also the casting. It’s bringing all these special faces and creative spirits into the output of the brand, whether it be a show or a look book. These are all the tangible elements that expand and elevate what are, ultimately, very simple products. It’s something that I’m really proud of.
JP You wrote in your show notes that the collection is about culture. What did you mean by this?
AH Writing show notes is something that always brings me great joy, because it’s a way of understanding what I’ve done. I don’t write them in advance of the show, and I also don’t plan exactly what the show is going to be. So once the collection is done, I take that time to reflect on what I set out to do, and what it actually ended up being and where the two roads meet. The older I get, the more I think about fashion and my practices outside the confines of central themes. Like, it’s not like this season will be about an architect, and another season will be about a Picasso collection or whatever. For me, it’s all about responding to the culture and responding to the times that we live in, and the way that people exist, and think, and what they wear and what they’re doing. That’s what I mean when I say that the show is about culture. It’s a mirror and a window and a pond. It’s sort of reflecting the world back to you, but there’s a muddied perfection. It’s about looking at something, but maybe from a different perspective. I want my collections to be real and grounded in the physical world, but I also want them to have this quality of moving things forward and provoking thought and conversation.
JP Last year, you began experimenting with pop-up stores for the first time. Looking forward to the rest of this year, do you have plans to expand the brand physically?
AH Absolutely. The end of last year was the first time that I’ve done anything physical in that sense. I never really wanted to, and I didn’t really have the time. This year, it’s definitely something that I want to explore more. It was hugely successful, and I got to meet a lot of my clients face-to-face. Just being able to meet people who are buying my clothes, and seeing what they respond to and what they’re excited by really energised my design practice. It was definitely commercially successful but also creatively very, very inspiring. After shows, I don’t really get to see anyone. I get to see the press, and I stay backstage, but I don’t really get to talk to anyone. So those pop-ups are a nice way for everyone to come together and to celebrate and try things on. It was one of those moments where I realised that I should have done it much earlier.
I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment, but my rough, chalky outline for this year is to do a pop-up for this season once the production is ready, as well as a pop-up for the next pre-collection, which would happen towards the end of the year. I’m really excited to have that coming up on the horizon.





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