What if summer wasn’t a season, but a memory embedded in us before we were even born? That’s the question posed in Archetypes. Embodied by Anok Yai and Binx Walton and lensed by Tyrone Lebon in the South of France the visual story conjures a figure pulled from the collective memory.

In psychology, this is known as an archetype: a universally recognized image that exists within all of us. Alaïa casts her as the Liberated Woman, defined by presence, motion, and power.

Creative director Pieter Mulier builds this myth through form. Spiral-cut skirts, swimsuits as a fourth layer of skin, and bustiers as protective shells safeguard one of the body’s most intimate terrains. Accessories like Le Teckel, Le Cœur, and the Hip bag, along with spiral hoop earrings, bracelets, big mask sunglasses, ballerinas, and heels, are reinvented to extend like expressions of the anima made visible.

Photography by Tyrone Lebone

Even the background imagery plays a role, with floating curves, loungers, and arches repeating the circular motif present throughout the collection. The campaign leans into this geometry, repeating it in silhouette, architecture, and styling to suggest infinity, connection, and return.

What gives it potency is what’s left unsaid. The closeness of the lens, the bare skin, the golden hour light collapse the barrier between observer and subject. There’s no spectacle, only a return to something instinctive and collective. The feminine form becomes mythic again through the Alaïa archetype.

Photography by Tyrone Lebone