Heliot Emil & Alpinestars for SS23

Paris Fashion Week was a couple of months ago now, and while there were many runways showing collections for the upcoming season, Heliot Emil had a particularly interesting one. For those who are unaware, they are an established Danish fashion house, who are well known for their intricate and highly technical garment construction, producing a uniform for the future. For their Spring/Summer 2023 runway, they put the collection (as they always do) into a very fitting industrial environment. A stripped back vision compared to the regularly gaudy avant-garde shows, it was surrounded by unfinished plaster walls, concrete pilers and factory lighting. Although eye-catching through its incongruence to the rest of the week’s proceedings, this wasn’t the most fascinating thing about the show. It was in fact, the repeated emergence of the Alpinestars logo on many of the garments.

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'Primal Substance' SS23 Runway Intro via @heliot_Emil

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If you haven’t really been around any motorsport or extreme sports in your lifetime, this fact may seem (and be) insignificant to you, which is reasonable. But for those who have, it probably was surprising to see the overlap of these two brands. One is associated with the grittiness and high-octane nature of the motorsport world, while the other is associated with intricate textural and visual design languages. Completely incongruent.

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Francesco Bagnaia Wearing Alpinestars in the MotoGP via @roadracing_world

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Although, Alpinestars produces high-functionality garments made to protect the wearer and improve performance. Both factors require many layers engineering design, along with use of intricate technologies. These are also required for Heliot Emil garments, although to produce a wearable visual spectacle in their case. When considering this, it is a perfect collaboration to create a clash of two worlds. Heliot Emil is also one of the few avant-garde labels which is easy to imagine someone riding a motorbike in, so there is that as well.

While it would have been extremely easy to slap Alpinestars logos onto existing Heliot Emil styles and call it a day, creating low effort but mutually beneficial brand awareness, it doesn’t seem that this was the label’s primary aim. Instead, it was apparent they wanted access to the plethora of high-tech motorsport intellectual property which lies within the Alpinestars vault so that they could integrate it into their pieces in an unorthodox way.

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Looks from the 'Primal Substance' SS23 Runway Show via @heliot_Emil

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For example, they took an Alpinestars abrasion resistant compression top, extended the length, changed the silhouette, added some strap detailing, and produced an eye-catching futuristic dress. Another example is the integration of high-performance chest protection into a figure-hugging vest. There are many other ingenious pieces along these same lines, which makes a fun game guessing what type of Alpinestars equipment makes each garment – it isn’t always immediately apparent. They also have taken some of the classic Alpinestars outerwear and changed the silhouette to make it more fashion forward. These are probably some of the more wearable pieces from the collection.

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Looks from the 'Primal Substance' SS23 Runway Show via @heliot_Emil

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While this collection hasn’t released yet, it is worth keeping an eye out for as we move through 2023. Whether these will be widely available or are just Paris Fashion Week exclusive pieces is yet to be seen. Although, it would be cool to see someone walking down the street in one of the pieces and try to guess if they ride motorcycles or not, just like thrasher and skateboarding.