For Albert Kriemler, fashion begins not with words but with sensation. “I don’t think in words; I think in touch and texture,” the designer reflected ahead of Akris’s Fall/Winter 2026 presentation in Paris. The statement is more than a personal credo—it forms the conceptual foundation of a collection shaped through a sustained dialogue with the work of the Colombian textile artist Olga de Amaral.
Olga de Amaral’s Textile Language Meets the Body
Courtesy of Akris.
Courtesy of Akris.
That exchange began in September 2025, when Kriemler traveled to Bogotá to meet Amaral in her studio. They spoke about craft, memory, and the sensory intelligence of materials—how textiles, experienced against the skin, can trigger emotion long before thought intervenes. For both makers, textile is not merely a medium but a language. As Kriemler observed, it is telling that textile and text share the same root: texere—to weave and to tell.
Few artists have expanded the expressive possibilities of fiber as profoundly as Amaral. For more than six decades, she has pursued a singular practice that moves between weaving, painting, sculpture, and installation. After studying architectural drafting in Bogotá and later textiles at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, she developed a visual language in which wool, linen, horsehair, cotton, gesso, and gold leaf become vehicles for structure, atmosphere, and light. Her works—now held in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago—have long dissolved the boundaries between craft, architecture, and abstraction.
During the radical rethinking of fiber art in the 1960s and ’70s, Amaral helped move tapestry beyond the wall and into sculptural space, transforming weaving from a traditionally domestic craft into a medium of conceptual and spatial force. Yet her contribution remains distinctly her own. Cascades of suspended strands, gridded surfaces, and luminous panels infused with gold leaf give her works a remarkable duality: materially grounded yet almost immaterial, hovering between object and atmosphere.
Gold plays a particularly central role in her visual language. Through layers of gesso, pigment, and gold leaf, Amaral transforms woven surfaces into radiant planes of light—objects that evoke both modernist abstraction and the ceremonial gold traditions of pre-Columbian Colombia.
Akris Translating Fiber into Fashion
Courtesy of Akris.
Courtesy of Akris.
Collector and cultural patron Christine Wuerfel-Stauss, known for curating art–fashion dialogues, described the Akris collection as bringing Amaral’s artistic journey “almost full circle.”
“What is remarkable about this collection,” she observed, “is the way it reconnects Amaral’s language with the body. She began by designing textiles meant to be worn, before developing weaving into sculptural abstraction where the focus shifted to material and light. Albert takes that artistic language and returns it to fashion.”
For Wuerfel-Stauss, color is where the dialogue becomes most visible. “One green in particular stood out—its depth and luminosity seemed inseparable from the fabric itself. Amaral showed how color can emerge directly from the material and the way it holds light. Albert takes that idea further, treating color as something that develops together with the textile.”
Kriemler’s achievement lies in the precision with which he translates Amaral’s material intelligence into the language of Akris. If Amaral’s works occupy space as what she once described as “presences—without intrusion,” Kriemler answers with garments designed to frame a woman’s presence rather than dominate it. The result is not visual quotation but disciplined transformation: texture, light, and structure reimagined through silhouette, movement, and restraint.
A Chromatic Narrative of Texture and Light
Courtesy of Akris.
Courtesy of Akris.
The runway unfolded as a carefully composed chromatic narrative. The opening sequence in black and gold established the collection’s luminous core. Fragmented jacquard cocoon coats, layered organza tiles, lamé leather, and sculptural evening silhouettes evoked the radiance of Amaral’s Alquimia works, where gold leaf transforms textile into light. Yet these garments remained unmistakably Kriemler in their control: luminosity was never decorative but calibrated through proportion, surface, and construction.
From there, the palette deepened into coffee, vicuña, and charcoal tones that foregrounded tactility. Bouclé coats, shearling outerwear, mouliné knits, and horsehair details emphasized the sensuous relationship between cloth and body. Fringes, appearing throughout the collection, subtly echoed the suspended strands of Amaral’s Nudo series, where fiber hangs with both gravity and delicacy.
A merlot chapter introduced warmth and chromatic intensity before the collection moved into sculptural black tailoring and eveningwear. The transitions felt deliberate and cumulative, mirroring the internal rhythm of Amaral’s work while remaining firmly anchored in Akris’s signature discipline and clarity.
Courtesy of Akris.
Courtesy of Akris.
Midway through the show, greens entered the palette—forest and Amazon tones suggesting a landscape sensibility that quietly evokes the Colombian geography informing Amaral’s visual imagination. Knit blousons, suede skirts, guipure dresses, and layered textiles conveyed a sense of organic growth and quiet structure.
A crescendo of jewel tones followed—turquoise, magenta, and caladium red—before the collection reached its ceremonial conclusion. Here, Kriemler’s dialogue with Amaral became particularly vivid. Golden Frame Organza Tiles gowns translated woven grids into architectural silhouettes, while the sweeping fringes of the Oro Lienzo pieces echoed the spatial movement of Amaral’s suspended fiber works. The painterly Escrito Candente print reflects the artist’s distinctive sense of color, capturing the vibrancy and depth that define her practice.
The final evening looks balanced sensuality with restraint. Gold lamé silk georgette gowns, black-and-gold column silhouettes, degradé fringes, and sculptural black pieces brought the collection to a moment of quiet culmination. By this stage, texture had become inseparable from structure, and color something far deeper than decoration—an atmosphere shaping how garments move and how the body inhabits space.
Material Memory and the Intelligence of Touch
Courtesy of Akris.
Courtesy of Akris.
For Akris, whose creative direction has long engaged with art, architecture, and design, this collaboration also extends a broader lineage. Over the years Kriemler has drawn inspiration from figures including Thomas Ruff, Sou Fujimoto, Carmen Herrera, Rodney Graham, Geta Brătescu, Vivian Maier, Felice Rix-Ueno, Imi Knoebel, Alexander Girard, and Reinhard Voigt—translating visual languages into textile structures and precise silhouettes. Amaral, however, represents a particularly resonant counterpart. Because her medium is fiber itself, the exchange feels less like citation than conversation—two makers speaking through the shared grammar of cloth.
What ultimately distinguished the collection was its quiet confidence, resisting spectacle in favor of precision and restraint. Even at its most luminous, it remained measured and exacting. Amaral once described the creative process with the words, “The mind was following, not guiding.” Something of that intuition seemed present here as well. But on this runway, it was Kriemler who gave that intuition form—through touch, proportion, and garments designed to let a woman simply be.
If Amaral’s works suspend time in woven strata of color, fiber, and gold, Kriemler’s collection suggests how those same principles unfold in motion. At Akris, weaving becomes more than a technique—it becomes a language, one that Albert Kriemler speaks with remarkable clarity, translating material into movement and presence.
