Nourredine Amir and the art of wearing art

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jul 2, 2018

There is a certain moment when fashion passes beyond the point of merely being clothes and becomes a proper artistic statement, a trajectory that was achieved Monday morning on the banks of the Seine by Nourredine Amir.
 

This Moroccan-born gentleman is really more like a sculptor than a designer, who crafts, weaves and twists unlikely materials into bold works of sculpture that women can actually wear.
 
Many of the 14 looks in this collection looked like they were made of steel or metal rope, though in actual fact they were composed of tubular mousseline, crushed silk or silk taffeta. There were a couple of looks that did include small elements of metal, yet the overall effect was that all the clothes looked molded onto the small cast of just seven models, rather than sewn together. Or somehow organically attached to his original casting, who paraded around the 7th floor of the Institut du Monde Arabe in the 5th arrondissement. 

Amir does boast a famous champion, Pierre Bergé, who staged an exhibition of his fashionable sculptures inside his foundation with Yves Saint Laurent in 2015 in Paris. Since then, Amir’s work has been exhibited at their foundation in Marrakech, where this Moroccan couturier lives.
 
Backed up by the music of Conforce, and an industrial track named Excess Mortality, this was a splendid artistic statement, and exactly why one attends the Paris couture season. Fashion of this sophistication is best appreciated and celebrated in the French capital.
 
“Why is Amir in the Institute du Monde Arabe? Because he is a true artist, who uses textile and metals to sculpt a unique vision. We are very proud to have him in Paris,” enthused Jack Lang, president of the famed museum and France’s most famous culture minister of the past half century.