Bluemarble’s High/Low Ambitions

Whenever it’s time to start working on a new collection, Bluemarble Creative Director Anthony Alvarez Graff starts with a pen and paper. “I usually try to write down the thoughts that are flowing through my mind to note how I feel, personally and in the world,” he tells me one Tuesday afternoon in late March. “Then, I try to find pictures that illustrate my mood.” In fact, throughout the year, Alvarez finds himself compulsively accumulating images that reflect his state of mind—historical drawings, old fashion editorials, art prints, cheeky advertisements, et cetera—which later form the basis of the inspirations for his designs. “Then, we like to sketch and take it in different ways as we drape on the body and the mannequin,” he says. “But it really starts with me writing about my feelings and where I want to take the collection conceptually.”


Today, Alvarez is still in that exploratory stage. Sitting in a sparsely-decorated room at his Paris-based studio, where he is currently ironing out the initial details for his SS26 collection, slated to debut at Paris Fashion Week in late June, the long-haired designer tells me he has just finished a meeting with his stylist, Patrick Welde, who joked about how quickly time had passed since their last show in January. “It just seems like it doesn’t stop. But it’s very fun to have the freedom to take it where we want at this stage,” he says excitedly.


That January show, titled Le quatre heures, was an ode to the French tradition of le goûter—in his own words: “a cherished ritual of sharing an afternoon sweet, usually with loved ones.” A callback to his childhood spent in the French countryside, it was Alvarez’s “most personal” collection yet. “It was about [finding] the extraordinary in the ordinary,” he says, an air of nostalgia present in his voice. “I see it as a celebration of life’s simplest moments. They’re short moments, but they last a lifetime.”


Alvarez translated those memories through novelty t-shirts featuring the slogan “countryside is for lovers,” as well as boutis quilts that draped over the body, bringing to mind children bundled up in their covers on chilly evenings. There was an abundance of destination pins calling back to the magnets he used to plaster onto the fridge after family trips, and even a hoodie that had been screen-printed with one of his grandfather’s handwritten recipes. But it was the setting that snapped the concept into place. Inside the venue, which was staged like a cozy cabin living room, guests found themselves seated around wooden tables piled high with food, all meant to be eaten; the snacks came courtesy of Mory Sacko, a French-West African Michelin-starred chef, who worked alongside Alvarez to develop the recipes. Everything felt inviting, like a real family affair—so it was quite fitting when, during the designer’s final bow, he emerged from backstage hand-in-hand with his mother and sister.


Though this was the first time Alvarez invoked his upbringing in such a literal sense, family and tradition have always been at the core of the designer’s work. The son of a French mother and a Filipino-American father, he grew up in a “multicultural home”—first in New Jersey, where he lived until he was eight, and then in France, where he would spend the remainder of his childhood.

At school in France, Alvarez quickly built a community around a shared interest in extreme sports: surfing and windsurfing in the summer; skateboarding, rollerblading, and BMX year-round. “I had this taste for adrenaline that was really present,” he explains. He also felt like it grounded him. “I mean, if I look at surfing, it’s a way of connecting with nature. It’s very humbling when you see the strength of the waves. It’s only through that that I am really able to disconnect completely, because your mind can only focus on one thing.”


It was through this community, too, that Alvarez would first develop an interest in fashion. As he dove deeper into that all-encompassing culture, he also adopted its accompanying style of dress. While many of his peers stuck to the more neutral tones of black, blue, and navy, Alvarez and his cohort were proudly dressing themselves in “baggy pants, colorful t-shirts, [and] a lot of Quiksilver, Rip Curl.” Laughing, he notes, “It was quite unconventional to go to school like that.”

Around age 12, Alvarez had his first inkling for a fashion label—an extreme sports clothing brand, naturally—but looking back, he confesses that the idea “had to mature a bit in [his] head” and “grow before it became tangible and real.” (He’s still in contact with the friend he first discussed the idea with.) And though the pull towards fashion always “stayed somewhere” within him, he opted for a more traditional career route after graduating high school, returning to America to study economics at Cornell University. The natural next step was to work in finance, which he did, but after several years, he was forced to come to terms with something he secretly always knew. “Finance was never for me,” he admits. “I wanted to stay because I didn’t want to just quit right away. But from the beginning, I never felt that fulfilled. I never felt inspired.”


Unsurprisingly, clothing played a rather large part in this gradual disillusionment. “It was very restrictive creatively, with the way you dressed [in the office],” he continues. “I had to wait for Fridays—the more ‘casual’ days—to wear my red pants or my green pants or my [fun] socks.” He had to quit, but he took a valuable lesson with him. “It built up even more this desire to really express myself.”


The designer would finally find his way back to fashion in 2017, thanks to a sojourn to the Philippines. There, he was invigorated by the country’s “artisanal craft, the warmth, the colors”—and upon returning to Europe, he was, at long last, determined to realize his dreams.

Drawn to the community he had built through extreme sports, Alvarez started his fashion career with the streetwear-focused label One Culture, which he built alongside a crop of like-minded friends. “Working with others helped me to find my voice,” he says. But after two years in this setting, he found that his mind was drifting elsewhere. “I wanted to just start [over] with a clear vision.”


So, in 2019, months before the world would be upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, Alvarez decided to break out on his own. He started with the name. A reference to the famous 1972 photo taken by the Apollo 17 crew—the first to show the entirety of the Earth’s surface—Bluemarble felt fitting. “I find that photo so inspiring,” he says. “[My brand] is an exploration of the world—a world that is proud of its inspirations, that has a vision, that is open and inclusive. I’ve always wanted to bring people together, and ‘Bluemarble’ reflects that desire.”


Alvarez sees his brand as an extension of the multiculturalism he grew up around. Throughout our conversation, the designer invokes terms like “dialogue,” “collaboration,” and “human interaction” constantly, almost as if by instinct. And when it comes to his designs, that inspiration isn’t difficult to spot. Take his SS24 collection, where the “West Coast vibe” shone through in a sun-and-surf-ready selection of oversized basketball jerseys and board shorts that had been airbrushed with hibiscus flowers. The season before, he drew parallels between New Orleans’s Mardi Gras and Venice’s own Carnival for a collection that saw models strutting down the runway in faux fur coats rendered in slick rainbow and shaggy, black-and-white dalmatian. “We are bringing these diverse worlds [together] in unexpected ways,” he says.

The brand’s unapologetic embrace of vibrant colors and deliberately loud prints makes it an anomaly on the Paris Men’s Fashion Week calendar. But as someone realizing a childhood dream, these codes come naturally. Unlike some designers, Alvarez has no qualms with the “streetwear” label—though he does see his designs as “pushing the boundaries a bit more.” “Streetwear is still present in my silhouettes. It’s still part of my inspiration,” he explains. “But it’s more about the dialogue between streetwear and other categories that we want to explore.”


To illustrate, he draws my attention to a pair of deceptively simple baggy jeans, which he cites as the first “true” Bluemarble design. “It’s really just workwear denim, but they’re embellished with hand-embroidered rhinestones,” he shares, positioning the brand DNA at the crux of high and lowbrow fashion. “It’s really this clash and this tension that we explore with the pieces and silhouettes we create—how we [elevate] a certain known archetype visually into something we’re not as used to seeing.”


Six years on, Alvarez continues to offer new iterations of those embellished jeans every season. They’re one of the brand’s bestsellers, a hot ticket item that has proven quite the celebrity magnet. Just ask Justin Bieber, who was an early adopter: The two-time Grammy winner was spotted in a pair from the FW22 collection, just months after they debuted on the runway.


“Justin Bieber, I remember, posted several pictures on his Instagram. It had an automatic impact,” he recalls, sure to note that these credits aren’t part of paid partnerships or the results of strategic gifting. “It’s not every celebrity,” he later clarifies, “but I feel like the celebrities that really resonate with our brand DNA are very aligned, which is amazing to see.”


It’s also helped that the industry has proven receptive to his vision. Just three years after launching, in 2022, Bluemarble received the Triple Crown of fashion acknowledgement: First came the LVMH Prize, where he finished as a semifinalist. ANDAM’s Pierre Bergé Prize and its accompanying €100,000 grant would soon follow. Before the year had ended, he was selected as a finalist for the Woolmark Prize—and though he didn’t win, he still feels the impact of that recognition. “They gave us access to manufacturers we weren’t able to access before,” he beams. “Knitwear became a very strong category for us.”

Several years on, Bluemarble seems more assured than ever. The brand has continued to scale, due to a crucial partnership with Tomorrow London Group and an overall increase in team size. (Alvarez’s finance background doesn’t hurt, either. “It helped me to have a clear understanding of the business side of the brand,” he says. “It gave me rigor and discipline, and that’s very important.”) Its list of notable fans seems to be getting longer by the day: Everyone from Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet to ESPY Award winner Lewis Hamilton has been seen in its wares, while buzzy musicians like Ty Dolla $ign and NLE Choppa and trendsetters like the Clermont Twins have become front-row fixtures at its runway shows.


Its success has actually allowed Alvarez to slow down, if only slightly. With an established foundation, he’s now dedicated to more deliberate, organic growth. Right now, he’s focused on building out the brand’s accessories line (beyond the shoes, hats, and tote bags already on offer). He also hopes to continue exploring the “community” aspect of the brand. Just weeks before our interview, Bluemarble staged a pop-up in Paris, where Alvarez was able to interact with his customers face-to-face. “I’d love to meet our communities in different countries, as well,” he says.


But first, he must get back to planning his quickly-approaching June fashion show. As our conversation winds down, I try to get Alvarez to give me some hints about what to expect. After all, he expresses a particular fondness for showing during the Spring/Summer season, mainly because “people are in a very celebratory mood.” His June shows usually fall around La Fête de la Musique (France’s “World Music Day” celebration), and last year, he presented on the Summer Solstice, which was a “really special” occasion.


After some gentle prodding, he tells me to look out for some carry-over from the FW25 collection. “It was very interesting [last season] to explore this duality between the rural and the urban, which, in a way, is how I feel now living in a city but also going for oxygen in these areas with nature. It’s not automatically going to be as personal, but I do want to reveal more and more of myself through the collections,” he says. “[The brand] has evolved as I feel more freedom to explore. Our DNA sharpens with every collection.”


It’s readily apparent that Alvarez sees Bluemarble only growing from here. “I’m just very excited to see what the future holds for us. It’s a very…” He pauses. “Well, it’s a beautiful adventure.”