Azzedine Alaïa

After the La Galerie Dior, Sande and I also visited the Foundation for the designer, Azzedine Alaïa. Alaia was a designer from Tunisia who came to the Paris in 1956 at the age of 21. He worked for various designers and in 1965 made the protype Mondrian dress for Yves Saint Laurent.

His Foundation, located where he lived and worked, had an exhibit, Lightness in Creation, of 20 Alaïa dresses paired with furniture created by the Japanese artist Shiro Kuramato.

Lightness in Creation Exhibit

Alaïa was a great collector and collected Kuramata's furniture. Kuramata died in 1991 and Alaïa organized an exhibit of his work in 2005. 

It was beautiful seeing the pairing of the furniture, which was light and often gravity defying, with Alaïa's creations.

Alaïa's designs were known for their very tight fit, skilled tailoring, and curve-accentuating seaming. He used leather and knits in inventive ways.

Unlike other designers, Alaïa normally stayed away from huge arenas and spectacles for the presentation of his collections. Instead, he kept to traditional, sedate salon showings where he strictly limited attendance and only presented a handful of garments. He showed on his own schedule, not conforming to the the timetable of fashion week shows other designers put on at the same time twice a year. He did not show a collection until it was ready. If he was tired out from a particularly successful season of high sales and the resulting heavy workload, he might not show at all the following season.

Alaïa's designs were timeless. The pairings with the furniture were beautiful. 

Alaïa said, "I only draw to jot down my work so that I don't forget. I make a pattern on calque paper, and I cut it out and attach it to a piece of paper with a pin. Then I begin working on a tailor's dummy, but I need a person for the fittings. Because a woman walks, her body moves, and I need to see how the fabric behaves on her." He tended to work late into the night and through to the early morning, with models, such as Naomi Campbell, there to try on the clothes as he worked.

I had visited the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation in February 2018, just a few months after Alaïa's death in November 2017. You can read a blog post I did then on my visit for more information about Alaïa. 

His studio is located one floor up, between his fitting room and his private living apartments. Since I last visited, a window was cut into the wall so you could see his atelier. It remains exactly as he left it, with the last dress he was designing on the tailor’s dummy.

Alaïa's Atelier

Today, Sande and I went to the Louvre to see their new Louvre Couture exhibit. It included a classic Alaïa dress that was part of his last collection before his death for Fall/Winter 2017-2018. The dress was stunning and timeless! A beautiful bookend to our day exploring Alaïa and his timeless fashion.

Alaïa Gown at the Louvre