It’s hard to defend Switzerland’s scant reputation as a flamboyant producer of ready-to-wear, luxury clothes. Only the brand name Bally has given Italian and French fabricants any run for their money in decades. But with the St- Gallese fashion label Akris’ coming of age, the Ticino firm is no longer alone in that compact Galaxy called Made in Switzerland. With 13 boutiques, the eastern Swiss brand has made its name on some of the world’s most prestigious shopping strips, such as Park Avenue in New York and Avenue Montaigne in Paris. It flashes on the cat walks of Paris every season, and is one of the few foreign brands with a place on France’s couture federation, along with Miyake and Valentino. Akris slid in with a discretion mirrored only in its purist style of clothing – a far cry from the ostentation of other flashy brands.
It targets middle-aged women with its demure designs that bring out “personality over dress,” says Kriemler, the designer who inherited this Swiss icon.
With his shy, intellectual look in steelframed glasses, the 47 year-old Kriemler has done no less than to thrust a respectable little company that made impeccable, if somewhat unimaginative, evening gowns to the heights of leader on the American market, and soon in the world.
He was only twenty years old, in 1979, when his father, Max Kriemler, called on him to replace a close colleague who had quit. For many long years, he learned the sartorial trade in all modesty, refusing to sign his first now even outdo Chanel and Armani.
Last year the Wall Street Journal touted it as among the 15 most eminent brands of luxury clothing in the country.
In Switzerland, Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard has also succumbed to its pure lines, to the organza and the silk – all the beautiful textiles out of which Kriemler cut most of his success.
But offering such luxurious creations to a politician is out of the question: Leuthard had to buy her outfits like everyone else, at the Akris boutique in St–Gallen, or in the big Bon Génie stores that carry a selection of the brand in their various points of sale in the French part of Switzerland.
The Federal Councillor will no doubt give in to another one or two items in the new collection, inspired by one Rudi Gernreich’s topless bathing suits from the 50s.
With its white and tawny dyes, its geometrical angles, its colourful linings (the only dash of fantasy), Kriemler’s spring-summer 2007 wardrobe is the very sketch of the modern woman in power: confident in feminity, imperious, victorious. Beyond that chic minimalism à la Jil Sander, Akris also excels in embroideries. This could explain how the company’s headquarters have persisted, undaunted, unchallenged, in the remote Eastern city of St–Gallen, where resides a peerless know–how in that trade.
This distance from Paris, London and Milan unshackles the Akris team from fashion’s razzle dazzle and futile constraints, leaving it free to create without always having to give disproportionate attention to fleeting modishness. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. Its designs tend to transcend time and dip rather toward the classics.
