Lutz Huelle only ever met the late Alber Elbaz fleetingly—notably at the fashion dinner hosted by President Emmanuel Macron—but the two had more in common than meets the eye. Both were lured to Paris by a dream of working in fashion, and each forged his own signature in an adopted hometown, in a language not their own, with one eye on legendary ideas about glamour, and the other on the serious business behind it all.
“The reason why I loved this project is that what Alber had in mind really corresponds to what I like anyway,” Huelle said during a visit to the AZ Factory showroom at the Fondation Cartier. “We have different stories: where he did very sophisticated, precious designs, I can be more street-y, but the thinking is the same. His catchphrase, ‘smart fashion that cares’ is so right. Now it’s a question of how we take that forward.”
Huelle is on his third collection as an AZ Factory Amigo, with another yet to come. For that reason, he said he chooses not to think in terms of season or trend, but rather of how to continue the conversation and build on whatever is already in a wardrobe. “It always has to be easy,” he said. “It’s about taking nice things and putting them together differently, so it’s about context as much as the clothes.”
Picking up on classic Parisian tropes, he revisited leopard print, now reworked in various ways on a bomber, knits, and an asymmetrical jersey skirt or a shirtdress with a flirty little flounced skirt. Striped men’s shirting was feminized with lace or a gloss of shiny transparent
sequins. Ultra-femme attributes like lace and ruffles cropped up in a black bomber or cutaway tiers, respectively. Conversely, the polo shirt was teased into popover dresses, for example in “a lipstick kiss” of shocking pink.
“Let’s dress up and get on with it,” is one way Huelle describes his fashion philosophy. To that point, not everything here makes that easy. But Huelle has talent and AZ Factory is still finding its way. Let’s see where they go next.