Joseph Altuzarra launches new ready-to-wear label Altu

New York designer Joseph Altuzarra is coming for our closets with a relaxed ready-to-wear label called Altu. Altuzarra—known for side-slit pencil skirts and Kamala Harris pantsuits—is the designer behind the new collection of “genderful” clothes with the new relaxed, ready-to-wear label. Genderful, says the designer, because he doesn’t like the “negation of gender expression that comes with the word genderless or gender neutral. For me,” he adds, “genderful is a very positive word. It acknowledges a kind of plurality of identity and I think it feels playful.”

A line of essentials with two styles of leather pants as hero pieces, Altu launched on December 1st exclusively on Altu.world and MatchesFashion.com. The project came together during the pandemic, but its genesis was much earlier. “From when I was a young kid I was always kind of aware of the feminine expression of my interests—in ballet, in fashion—and made to feel sort of ashamed about them,” Altuzarra says. Having a baby girl crystalized his understanding of just how early we’re indoctrinated in the stereotypes around gender roles.

Gender-fluidity became a fashionable topic in the mid-2010s when Alessandro Michele blasted off at Gucci and New York labels like Hood By Air and Gypsy Sport began smashing runway conventions; we called what they did unisex for a time. “I’m aware for sure that I’m not the first person to explore this,” Altuzarra says. “What’s interesting about what we’re doing is that we’re trying to operate outside of the binary… I didn’t want to design men’s clothes for women,” or vice versa. Retailers and etailers have some work to do to catch up; toggling between men and women is the first click most sites ask us to make. But Altuzarra is anticipating change.

One reason for that is the amazing response he got to Troye Sivan’s Met Gala look last September. Sivan wore a bicep cuff from the Leather Man, a diamond Cartier necklace, and a scoop-front Altu tank dress that limned his narrow frame. Sivan’s stretchy dress was designed to seduce. “I just wanted to be hot,” he told Vogue’s livestream host Keke Palmer at the time. And hot Sivan was. Then, nobody knew what Altu was. But thanks to Sivan’s million+ Instagram followers, that changed quickly. “I think it captured a feeling and mood that resonated with a lot of people,” he says. “The overwhelming positivity to the brand has been really beautiful to see.”

As Vogue reports, during the lockdowns Altuzarra explored his own gender expression, challenging his ideas of maleness by wearing skirts over pants or skirts on their own. “Altu is a very personal reflection of my own discovery on this,” he says. Meaning that the collection will evolve as his thinking about gender—and his customers’ thinking—changes.“That makes it feel different from Balthazar, and I like that,” he says. “A lot of times capital-B brands are expected to stay stagnant, to create codes that don’t change. Altu is almost more like a cultural project, it sort of exists outside of fashion.”

It’s fashionable nonetheless. The leather pants come in a wide-leg carpenter cut and a narrower low-rise version. Altuzarra wears both, and he says each style went through “probably 20 fittings,” to ensure they’d work for “all genders, different sizes, and different shapes.” (Sizing is numerical from 0 to 7, based on measurements, though there will be a chart that converts gendered sizing to Altu sizing on the brand website.) Naturally, Sivan’s tank dress is in the mix, as are hoodies and tees—note the slit in the t-shirts’ necklines; Altuzarra wears his that way, slipping a gold necklace his husband gave him 13 years ago through the hole. There’s also a reversible shearling leather jacket and a crossbody bag that converts into a backpack, versatility being one of Altu’s own codes.

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Photo Credit: Ovidiu Hrubaru / Shutterstock.com