Alémais Launches Resort 2024 Collection
Australian contemporary ready-to-wear label Alémais has dropped its resort collection, which first appeared on the brand’s Australian Fashion Week-opening, debut runway show in May.
Creative director Lesleigh Jermanus (Zimmermann’s former longtime head designer), noted the collection and show was a milestone event for the three-year-old label, and expanded its global presence with strong feedback from buyers due to her expanded assortment of occasion and event dressing.
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Jermanus said the brand, priced from $195 to $2,800, currently has around 300 global wholesale partners and recently picked up an additional 45 doors during its spring season while showing in New York, London and Paris, where it plans to show again for the pre-fall season.
The collection’s first drop is now available on the brand’s website (after selling out 50 percent of styles for pre-order, Jermanus noted), and will be available dropping with stockists throughout the month.
“We’ve got great stockists that haven’t launched yet, so that sets them up really well and means we can direct all of our customers to our amazing wholesale partners. Customers always go back to the commercial classics. We’ve been selling to them really well since our first collection. Now, I think because they have that confidence, they’re looking to buy into new shapes that still have that wearability, beautiful luxury fabrics and finishes,” she said.
Jermanus cited key pieces within the resort line — titled “Kaboom,” and inspired by a meld of “Return to Oz with the yellow brick road” with psychedelic ’60s, ’70s and ’80s inspirations — ranging from a red recycled sequin dress and hand-embroidered artisanal layers to commercial classics. For instance, new T-shirt dresses with long sleeves, round necks and collaborative placement prints with select artists, crafted in both linen and silk for the brand’s Northern and Southern Hemisphere stockists and clients.
“We’re at that point where it was about experimentation and trying new things — how do you want to wake up and feel tomorrow? It was really joyful for us to design and create. We always want the customer to feel that, yes, the world can be really serious and a bit somber at times, especially now, but it’s that moment of pleasure and joy that you have for yourself — that you can invest in, wear something and throw it on in the morning, and go out in the day and feel really good in it.“
In addition, the collection further expands the brand’s sustainability-minded DNA, utilizing new fabrications such as floral styles crafted from a Sicilian regenerative orange peel fabrication (the hand-feel noted as a blend between a silk and soft cotton linen); plant-based bio leathers, and a good amount of organic cotton.
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