Alaïa’s Pieter Mulier Is Following a Legend—And Pushing the Storied House Into the Future

[gentle piano music]

Hi, Vogue.

I m Pieter Mulier, creative director of Alaia.

Today I m showing you my house and my home

in Antwerp, Belgium,

and I m showing you a few of my favorite objects

and things that I adore.

[jazz music]

We re standing here in my kitchen,

and one of the things I love the most around me

is one, the view of Antwerp behind,

and two is her.

I like the idea that she welcomes everybody

that comes to the apartment.

It s a large ceramic that I found in Brussels

on the flea market.

And the guy from who I bought it told me

that she was always in the entryway of a building

built in the 1950s.

So I immediately fell in love with her.

I gave her this position in the kitchen

as a warm welcome to everybody that that arrives.

And I love that she blends together

with the travertine of the kitchen.

She s important, she s quite delicate,

and that I like. So why don t you come with me

and I ll show you a few of my other objects.

[jazz music]

So I would like to show you here a collection

that is very dear to my heart,

cause it s based on a friend of mine

who gave me my first bracelet ever.

I m not a big jewelry person,

but in bracelets there s something very beautiful,

especially for a man.

The first one I ever bought was this one.

A Mexican bracelet,

done by an architect that s called Antonio Pineda.

It s made in the 1950s,

and actually a bracelet that is made

for a woman to wear here, around the arm.

There s something about when you work with your hands,

like we do in fashion.

I like the idea that we embellish our hands.

These are our tool.

Even nowadays, we don t think it s a tool anymore, hands.

For me it is.

Cause I still sketch.

I still make, I still develop with them.

And I quite like the idea that you put a bracelet on.

It gives them strength, gives also something to play with.

I m not a nervous person,

but I quite like to play with it.

Take it off,

actually mostly,

when I arrive in the studio for a fitting,

I take the bracelet off and I put it in front of me,

and I look at it,

and then when the day is done, I put it back on.

[gentle piano music]

So this is the reason why I bought this apartment

10 years ago.

It s because of the view

on the historical center of Antwerp.

For me, it represents the real sense

of what luxury is about, because it s unique.

There s not many views like that here.

It s just perfect.

So I m lucky to wake up with it,

go to bed with it, and it changes every minute,

with the Flemish sky.

We have the light now, we re very lucky,

because it s nearly spring light.

But even in winter, the view,

together with a very dark light is just breathtaking.

And I see it as

maybe the most important artwork that I take care of,

because it looks like a painting that evolves constantly.

[gentle piano music]

The garden, come, I ll show you.

Unlike fashion, gardens take time.

So we planted everything with small plants.

We weren t snobbish to to buy big plants immediately.

We gave them time to grow.

So now it s nearly 10 years that I have the garden.

And this is the state now.

In another 10 years, everything will be green all around,

but we have to wait, and there s a beauty in waiting.

So from all the garden,

we only kept two things that were original.

It s a pine tree, a very simple pine tree,

and a pine tree on the other side.

The original architect of this house is Paul De Meyer.

What is interesting about De Meyer

is that he cut this tree himself.

He was in love with the cathedral, which you see in the end.

So his idea was that since he had a big renovation project

on the cathedral in the 80s, 90s,

the idea of one of his masterpieces,

or one of the most important things he did in his career,

to frame it with something natural was important,

so he could look from the living room up to what he did.

And I like the idea of that.

I like the idea that an architect

that normally controls everything in life,

where everything is mathematical,

just chooses to take something natural

and tries to control it, but it will never be controlled.

[stately string music]

So this is John John.

He s my best friend, my companion.

We re talking about objects,

but of course he s not an object.

I think he s much more important than that.

He s family, pure family.

As me, I m lucky to live here.

John John is very lucky to live here too,

because he sometimes feels like a lion when he is here.

And he loves to crawl into this,

and just look at the city.

John John is actually American.

We rescued him from Georgia

when he was three months old.

I saw an advertising of him,

and I immediately said, oh God, I love this dog.

And since then he s been traveling the world with me.

He s been working with me,

he s been cooking with me, sleeping with me.

He does everything I do.

We called him John John,

cause when he was small and still now,

I thought he was as handsome as John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Come John.

[stately string music]

So when we moved into this apartment,

I was thinking to leave everything empty.

And a very good friend of mine

visited us the first year where we had dinner

on that big concrete table.

His name is Sterling Ruby.

He was obsessed with the apartment and the textures,

the roughness of that sort of beauty.

And six months later there was a FedEx packet

in front of the door.

And this was in it.

So it s a bronze heart, and it s signed on on the back,

Congratulations on your new house.

I made this, especially for this wall.

It changes color during the year cause it s bronze,

so it will become green.

And I love the idea of the heart shape that starts crying.

But from all artworks that we take care of.

I think this is the one of the most important ones.

Cause I always look at it.

Since I work in the kitchen,

that s the only piece I look at it, the whole day.

Since I love Sterling and his wife, and his family,

it s important.

[cheerful piano music]

This is our library.

Books for me are maybe more important

than artworks or objects.

The most important one for me is,

where is it?

Ah, it s here,

is this one.

It s the only thing I have from my grandfather.

When he passed away, unfortunately at a very late age

that s the only thing I wanted from him.

And it s a book from 1951,

on a concrete convent built by Le Corbusier.

It s also the first time I saw

what you can do with concrete.

I keep it very dear to my heart.

Actually, I ve put it there,

but I should put it next to my bed.

It tells me a moment in my life where everything changed

from being quite classical,

to seeing stuff like this at his house,

and thinking, oh my God,

there s much more than just being plastic and calm.

It also shows that you can do big things

while still saying humble and human.

So I treasure it for the rest of my life.

So let me show you in the office

a few more objects that make my heart beat.

Come with me.

[pizzicato string music]

So I wanted to show you guys this one.

It s a piece of radical design.

I just couldn t leave it

because it represents everything that I like,

in architecture and in design.

Basically what we see here is just a piece of aluminum

and an inner tube of a tractor.

As you look at it in the first glance,

you don t even know what you have to do with it.

There s nothing utilitarian about it.

It s just merely a sculpture.

People who come and visit me think it s very strange,

and it s always good in first impression

when things are strange, and you have to think about it.

So this one, I like it a lot.

[lively string music]

So this is a studio where I work,

together with the Alaia team, mostly.

It looks very minimal now.

Normally it s not at all.

It s chaotic,

there s things everywhere.

But at least this gives

nearly a white canvas to explain you,

and show you, mostly,

one of the most important pieces of clothing

I have in my wardrobe.

It s a piece of Raf of 2001,

and it s part of the Manic Street Preachers collection,

and it s a collection that was very important

for Raf s career and Raf s brand.

But also for me, because it s at that time

where I learned about him.

It s a piece I wore often, really, really often.

And I think if I should keep one thing of my closet,

that s the only one I would keep.

It s extremely simple.

It s a bomber, with patches on top.

And again, it shows that with less you can do so much.

And now it s nearly 23 years later

and I still wear it, during the winter.

So the zipper broke.

I washed it a couple of times, but it s, for me,

my favorite piece ever.

You always meet one or two people in your life

that pushes you forward.

And I think for me, Raf is definitely that person

that took me and pushed me, pushed me,

pushed me to always do better,

to teach me that you have to be curious all your life.

[minimalist string music]

So welcome to another part of the studio,

which is actually my personal office.

I would like to end our little meeting with three objects.

I quite like the idea of having objects

with me or in my pocket, or in my pocket of my coat.

The first of it is miniature work

of Cesar, a French artist.

It s from the 1970s and it depicts a female breast.

What I like the most about it is

that it s done in two metals, copper, and bronze.

The emotional thing about it is

that I wear it on every show.

Azzedine Alaia, Cesar gave him

a real life sculpture of the breast.

When you come to visit us in the offices

it s that sculpture that you see the first.

So I like the idea that every time I do a show,

I wear a little piece of him on me.

The other two are these.

It s a pre-Colombian piece of a necklace

that somebody gave to me.

And the other one is a little bronze bunny

that was back in the days, an opener for a bottle.

But I broke it,

and I found it in the flea market.

Basically, when I keep them in my pocket,

and sometimes I even hold them in my hand,

they give me some strength at moments that I need it.

And even just the idea to know that they re with me

is already quite soothing.

[gentle piano music]

Thanks, Vogue, for coming over and visiting the apartment.

It has been a pleasure to share my environment with you.

And in the end, sharing is caring.

See you soon.

[gentle piano music]