via GRAPHIC PLUS — Steven Meisel, among the most influential image-makers in the history of fashion, photographs Alaïa’s Winter Spring 26 campaign. It continues a tradition of collaboration with photography’s most pre-eminent talents, initiated by Azzedine Alaïa and carried forward today by Pieter Mulier.

As with Meisel’s most memorable work, and in direct resonance with the history of the Maison, these images have a sense of nostalgia, yet are bound to remain.

Building on the philosophy of the collection itself, the campaign is reduced, sculptural, and powerful. Its simplicity and frontal quality introduce an intentional radicality. No noise, just beauty.

The purity of the setting, the absence of ornament, and the deliberate repetition of a single composition place the body and the garments at the centre of the image. A fundamental reduction becomes a method of accessing timelessness. The images speak directly to the essence of Alaïa. Each functions as a moment, almost as a tableau. Here, the sculptural language historically associated with the Maison shifts towards the statuesque. The bodies are treated as sculpture.

This same uncompromising approach informs the casting. Vanessa Becker, Noor Khan, Iasmin Silva, Jiahui Zhang, and Danielle Currie represent a generation of rising faces. Their plurality reflects Alaïa’s own.

The Winter Spring 26 show’s soundtrack, created by Gustave Rudman, is carried through into the campaign films, extending this same atmosphere and rhythm into motion.

More than a campaign, this series is an act of image-making, almost like a craft. Images intended to be remembered. Images of quality, not reality. Images made to invite dreaming.

A moment of fashion, defined by timelessness. As is Meisel’s work and as is Alaïa.