VAILLANT

VAILLANT

VAILLANT opens Wednesday’s programme with designer Alice Vaillant’s sculptural, dance-inflected womenswear. Born in Paris, Vaillant grew up learning to sew in her grandmother’s costume atelier and trained for over a decade at the Paris Opera Ballet School, including work in the ateliers of the Palais Garnier — an experience she has cited as foundational to her sense of form, movement, and texture. After leaving dance, she studied fashion design in Montreal, completed a master’s in womenswear in Paris, and worked with Jean Paul Gaultier and Nina Ricci before launching her label in 2019. 

Vaillant’s design language balances architecture with the body: precise construction, layered materials, sharp tailoring set against lace and structured outerwear, influenced explicitly by post-modern architecture’s interest in geometry, proportion, and abstraction. Her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, “Le Récital,” staged at the Paris Opéra Bastille, returned directly to her ballet roots — organza and chiffon tutus, lace trims, and sharp tailoring draped with ethereal fabric, juxtaposing classical ballet codes with Old Hollywood glamour. A subsequent Fall 2026 collection imagined a meeting between Ballets Russes dancer Bronislava Nijinska and a 1920s Parisian street archetype, mixing open-knit, leotard-like bodysuits with satin coats trimmed in fur and rose embroidery. 

For S/S 2027, VAILLANT continues producing entirely in France and Europe to limit its environmental footprint, presenting a wardrobe the house describes as a dialogue between vulnerability, poetry, and sensuality — precision-built basics grown from deep research, true to the artisanal vision Vaillant has carried from her earliest days at the barre.

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