Azzadine Alaia was born on a farm in Tunisia on the 7th of June 1940. His parents were both farmers but his glamorous twin sisters inspired his love for couture. He is a couturier and shoe designer, and was particularly influential in the 1980’s being crowned the “King of Cling.”
Professional History
He lied about his age to get himself into the local École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and began studying sculpture where he gained valuable insights into the human form. He then began work as a dressmaker's assistant and soon began dressing private clients, in 1957 he moved to Paris to work in fashion design. Whilst there he worked for Christian Dior as a tailleur, but soon moved to Guy Laroche for two seasons, then for Thierry Mugler until he opened his first atelier in his apartment the late 1970s. His atelier dressed the world's jet set, from Marie-Hélène de Rothschild to Greta Garbo.
In 1980 he produced his first ready-to-wear collection and moved to larger premises on rue du Parc-Royal. Alaïa was voted Best Designer of the Year and Best collection of the Year at the Oscars de la Mode by the French Ministry of Culture in 1984 in a memorable event where Grace Jones carried him in her arms on stage!
Designer Andrée Putman was walking down Madison Avenue with one of the first Alaïa leather coats ad was stopped by a Bergdorf Goodman buyer and asked what she was wearing. This began a turn of events that lead to Alaia designs being sold in New York and Beverly Hills. By 1988, he had opened his own boutiques in these two cities and in Paris. His seductive, clinging clothes were a massive success. Devotees included fashion-inclined celebrities such as Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Naomi Campbell etc.
Alaïa virtually vanished from the fashion scene, during the mid-1990’s following the death of his sister. He did however continue to cater for a private clientele and enjoyed commercial success with his ready-to-wear lines.
In 2000 he signed a partnership with the Prada group. Working with Prada saw him through a second impressive renaissance, and in July 2007, he successfully bought back his house and brand name from the Prada group, though his footwear and leather goods division continues to be developed and produced by the group.
2009
Silhouette
Alaïa's clothes caught the mood of the times when many women had turned to exercise and a new, muscled body shape had begun to appear in the pages of fashion magazines. Many women wanted to flaunt their newly-toned bodies, helped by recent developments in fabric construction that enabled designers to create clothing to accentuate the female form in a way unprecedented in European fashion.
Although, at first sight, Alaïa's clothes seem to cling to the natural silhouette of the wearer, they actually create a second skin, holding in and shaping the body by techniques of construction such as faggoting. This body consciousness is further enhanced by using materials such as stretch lace over flesh-colored fabric to give an illusion, rather than the reality, of nudity.
The signature Alaïa look began to emerge in the early 80s: rivetted leather, industrial-zipped dresses, a predominance of knit fabrics and experimental mixes of lace and leather, silk jersey and tweed. Every year, Alaïa extends his palette of fabrics. In 1994, he showed long dresses in "houpette", a stretchy new fabric that molds to the body. The following year he made clothes out of "Relax", an anti-stress fabric with carbon-dipped fibres that repel electromagnetic waves. NASA uses it for wall and floor coverings.
Like Alaïa's timing, his hemlines are impervious to the dictates of fashion. They can run from upper-thigh to ankle-length within the same collection. What is constant, however, is a tailoring and cut that follows the same principles as corset-making - the use of stays, whalebones, lace-ups and decolletage to flatter the figure and highlight the bust.
A side note: one of his dresses is featured in the film ‘Clueless” you may remember the lines as the main character Cher is mugged:
ROBBER: C'mon! Alright, now, uh, get down on the ground. Face down. C'mon!
CHER: Oh, no. You don't understand, this is an Alaia.
ROBBER: An a-what-a?
CHER: It's like a totally important designer.
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