Azzedine Alaïa: an exhibition at the Palais Galliera
The Tunisian couturier, who died in 2017, was not only an exceptional cutting virtuoso but an avid collector who, over the years, acquired valuable pieces from couturiers of the past, which are now exhibited in the Galliera museum in Paris.
Ten years after the major retrospective dedicated to the couturier at the Palais Galliera, the Paris Fashion Museum remembers him with an exhibition that presents, for the first time, the exceptional collection of garments that he assembled over the years.
Azzedine Alaïa (1935-2017), one of the greatest and most uncompromising designers of the 20th and 21st centuries, was a great virtuoso of cutting. His technical skill was the result of his obsessive dedication and his long experience in treating and serving his clients as well as his deep admiration for the couturiers of the past.
Alaïa began his collection in 1968, when, after the closure of the Balenciaga house, he rescued some of its valuable pieces. Captivated by the study of the Spanish master's Haute Couture creations, the couturier became passionate about the history of his own discipline and managed to collect more than twenty thousand garments, thus becoming the largest collector in the world in this field, whose pieces cover from the birth of Haute Couture at the end of the 19th century to some of his own contemporaries. His vast collection – which he accumulated in the utmost secrecy and which was never revealed during his lifetime – includes pieces by Worth, Jeanne Lanvin, Jean Patou, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Paul Poiret, Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior, as well as as contemporary creations by Jean-Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler and Yohji Yamamoto.
Alaïa admired all these couturiers who marked the spirit of their times through their models and gathered them in her personal collection in order to feel closer to them. In fact, his passion was only equaled by that he felt for his collection of which one hundred and forty models are exhibited at the Galliera.
"For many years, I have bought and received dresses, coats and jackets that bear witness to the great history of fashion. Keeping them has become for me a sign of solidarity with those who, before me, knew the pleasure and demands of the scissors. It is a tribute on my part to all the professions and all the ideas that these garments express.” Azzedine Alaïa.
