“Fabric is my gouache,” quips designer Alexandre Mattiussi, telling the story of one of his collections. French label Ami Paris has opened the doors of its Parisian atelier in Dominique Miceli’s documentary film Alexandre Mattiussi, Ami, naissance d’une collection (Alexandre Mattiussi, Ami, birth of a collection), which will be broadcast on Sunday June 16 at 10 am CET on the Paris Première channel (owned by the M6 group).

Miceli, a French director who five years ago produced a documentary on Isabel Marant, closely followed Mattiussi and his staff over a period of 120 days – a very short incubation by fashion industry standards – during which Ami hatched the Fall/Winter 2024 menswear collection. The film traces the collection’s development, from the choice of fabrics to the selection of the 62 looks that showed on the runway. 

Fashion like cuisine 

The documentary has delved deep behind the scenes of the Ami Paris label, founded in 2011. At the entrance to the offices, a welcome mat sports the Ami de cœur logo, a leitmotif throughout the label’s men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collections. While Mattiussi enjoys a right royal view of an equestrian statue of French king Louis XIV as he sets about his daily work, in his office overlooking place des Victoires in Paris’s 1st arrondissement.

“Each collection resembles the preceding one, it’s a principle I’ve been following from early on. When I design a collection, I sort of know where I want to go with the next one (…) The ingredients are nearly the same, but it’s never the same dish, it’s a seasoning process,” said Normandy-born Mattiussi, 43, who believes that fashion “is like cuisine.” 

Mattiussi riffs on this culinary metaphor throughout the 52’ documentary. The film shows him first going “to the market” (his showroom) to pick out his “ingredients” (clothes and accessories), before he “starts cooking, and then sits down to dinner on January 18.” 

The documentary paints an intimate, pragmatic and accurate story, brimming with details and anecdotes as it retrospectively charts the genesis of a menswear collection designed as a tribute to Paris and its symbols. Shot over the course of four months at the end of 2023, the documentary starts with sketches and inspirational moodboards, and shows how they morph into a sophisticated selection of androgynous silhouettes, with even the shoes finally being fitted with the perfect heel. 

The story is punctuated by the strokes of a colourful feather duster, as Mattiussi swept the fabric samples in the office under the staff’s entertained eye, by his rather extravagant “Monday morning ideas,” for example entirely coating a sweater in golden buttons for a Midas effect (an idea that was eventually dropped), and by humorous moments, like at show day minus five, when Mattiussi, prancing around the atelier sporting a new platinum blond haircut – a souvenir of his Rio holiday – went about picking his “ingredients” while singing Céline Dion’s All By Myself at the top of his voice.

The documentary shows the succession of fittings and castings with stars of the seventh art like Lou Doillon, Diane Kruger and Laëtitia Casta, Mattiussi’s muses and friends, pictured at the show wearing respectively a military-style brown greatcoat, a belted navy-blue blazer, and an oversize chocolate-coloured coat. The Tennis Club de Paris hosted the show on January 18, made over into a Parisian street setting featuring beige-coloured post boxes and a building with the ‘9’ street address, Mattiussi’s lucky number.