Maria Høgh Heilmann decided to mark Aiayu’s “20 turns around the sun” by making her runway debut. At Nils Stærk gallery, her guests witnessed ease and serenity in motion. There is nothing pretentious about this brand’s designs, which feel simple rather than minimal because they seem to have an innate warmth and aiayu (which means soul in Aymaran, the language of the indigenous people of Bolivia).
Twenty years in, Aiayu’s wares are made in Bolivia, where the brand story began in 2005, as well as India, Mongolia, Nepal, and Europe. It’s in South America that Heilmann, a Neil Barrett alum who studied fashion design in Denmark and knitwear in Italy, was inspired to find a new way forward in fashion. “I had spent years in fashion, but I wanted to work with my hands again, to feel the raw beauty of natural materials, and to be closer to the people who know them by heart,” she noted.
The spring collections included a crisp cotton shirtdress, linen shorts, sweaters wrapped around necks like scarves, and long tanks layered over T-shirt dresses. On the surface, there was nothing radical about any of it, yet the perfect simplicity and restraint of a sleeveless sweater and trousers in complementary shades of blue, say, requires commitment and self-confidence to wear. Maybe it’s so easy to picture these clothes in uncluttered and light-filled modern interiors because they were designed for living—and the long haul.