segmented, via.
one thing alone identified the dress as an Alaïa; well, two things. even without the cold gleam of the First Lady’s arms, it provoked the idea that a woman tends to look her most beautiful in clothes that make her look strong, not glamourous or sexy or powerful. there is a difference. those with a vivid memory of Stephanie Seymour squatting in Richard Avedon’s 1994 portrait to plant a kiss on her favorite designer, her naked buttocks leaving her Alaïa chaps with the whooosh of an automobile in a snowbound slide, will surely debate the point that strength is the essential ingredient of an Alaïa.
and maybe so. maybe the notion of strong-looking fashion, based on concrete methods and examples rather than abstractions and ironic statements, is dying, and there is nobody around with the grit and stamina to map the geography of a woman’s body, as he has done for last 45 years. ballet has its technique and physical rigors. painting has its schools. american music has its places of the heart, like the Delta; cookery, its ingredients and careful preparations. fashion, though, gets its power and unanswerable logic from the female body, and, at roughly 70, Azzedine Alaïa is its undisputed master.
the standard pattern of a designer interview is to give you emotional turbidity. (John Galliano, on a 2003 Dior couture show: 'i want to feel it. i want to rip and tear it and cut it until the pain is in the dresses.')
Mr. Alaïa would show you how to make the dress and shut up about the rest. not talking about it is also a way to avoid a falseness — the falseness of thinking poetic language can be applied to dressmaking. at some point you have to decide what color 'pain' is, and whether it should have long sleeves or short.
like other types of craftsmen who perform the actual work themselves — aside from designing every style, he does all the pattern-making and fittings — he’s happiest when working. he works all the time. and since he has always lived and worked under the same roof (for the last 19 years on rue de Moussy, and for much longer with his partner, Christoph von Weyhe, a painter, and a variety of dogs and cats), this is no problem. his ideal assistant is someone just like him. 'he wants someone who understands his way of thinking, someone who makes him happy when he’s working and gives him feedback,' said the designer Sophie Theallet, who worked with him for a dozen years.
also useful to his fashion education were the few years he designed costumes for the dancers at the Crazy Horse. 'i learned a lot about women’s naked bodies at the Crazy Horse,' he once said.
yhou could certainly find interview subjects with more to say about themselves. but as far as he is concerned, everything that is worth knowing can be observed. you just have to watch him work, and wait.
- Cathy Horyn, 8 December 2010, New York Times
one thing alone identified the dress as an Alaïa; well, two things. even without the cold gleam of the First Lady’s arms, it provoked the idea that a woman tends to look her most beautiful in clothes that make her look strong, not glamourous or sexy or powerful. there is a difference. those with a vivid memory of Stephanie Seymour squatting in Richard Avedon’s 1994 portrait to plant a kiss on her favorite designer, her naked buttocks leaving her Alaïa chaps with the whooosh of an automobile in a snowbound slide, will surely debate the point that strength is the essential ingredient of an Alaïa.
and maybe so. maybe the notion of strong-looking fashion, based on concrete methods and examples rather than abstractions and ironic statements, is dying, and there is nobody around with the grit and stamina to map the geography of a woman’s body, as he has done for last 45 years. ballet has its technique and physical rigors. painting has its schools. american music has its places of the heart, like the Delta; cookery, its ingredients and careful preparations. fashion, though, gets its power and unanswerable logic from the female body, and, at roughly 70, Azzedine Alaïa is its undisputed master.
the standard pattern of a designer interview is to give you emotional turbidity. (John Galliano, on a 2003 Dior couture show: 'i want to feel it. i want to rip and tear it and cut it until the pain is in the dresses.')
Mr. Alaïa would show you how to make the dress and shut up about the rest. not talking about it is also a way to avoid a falseness — the falseness of thinking poetic language can be applied to dressmaking. at some point you have to decide what color 'pain' is, and whether it should have long sleeves or short.
like other types of craftsmen who perform the actual work themselves — aside from designing every style, he does all the pattern-making and fittings — he’s happiest when working. he works all the time. and since he has always lived and worked under the same roof (for the last 19 years on rue de Moussy, and for much longer with his partner, Christoph von Weyhe, a painter, and a variety of dogs and cats), this is no problem. his ideal assistant is someone just like him. 'he wants someone who understands his way of thinking, someone who makes him happy when he’s working and gives him feedback,' said the designer Sophie Theallet, who worked with him for a dozen years.
also useful to his fashion education were the few years he designed costumes for the dancers at the Crazy Horse. 'i learned a lot about women’s naked bodies at the Crazy Horse,' he once said.
yhou could certainly find interview subjects with more to say about themselves. but as far as he is concerned, everything that is worth knowing can be observed. you just have to watch him work, and wait.
- Cathy Horyn, 8 December 2010, New York Times
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