The old adage of not reading a book by its cover rang true in relation to Aiayu’s fall collection. Maria Høgh Heilmann chose to open the show with an innocuous look: button-down, pants, and crewneck sweater in shades of blue that seemingly went beyond normcore to plaincore. Yet if that was all there was to it, Aiayu wouldn’t have been around for 20 years.
The brand story started in 2005 when Høgh Heilmann met a Bolivian yarn manufacturer with a product the designer wanted to work with. The issue was there was no knitwear factory to produce it in. Working together with the manufacturer and the Danish International Development Agency, Aiayu built one that operates sustainably and ethically, giving back to the local community. As Aiayu has grown, so has its network of artisans, and it was that worldwide team that the designer was thinking about when creating the fall collection. “I see these people in all of the outfits; it’s very much a tribute to all the craftsmen and collaborators that we have,” Heilmann said.
The collection played out like a series of tone poems, starting with blues and deepening into slate grays and blacks, following with off-white and then browns. “It’s the yaks and the llamas and the sheep that kind of decide [the hues],” said the designer. The combinations of these hues revealed the modular aspects of the collection; how, for example, layering classic shirts one over the other can be a flex. Scarves and sweaters were tied around the body like soft embraces, and who doesn’t one of those these days?
