Alaïa, The Couturier Who Shaped Women

Portrait of the world-famous French-Tunisian couturier, Azzédine Alaïa, with the master speaking himself. Obsessed with the female body, he magnified women’s curves by sculpting clothes on them. He dressed the most famous, from Greta Garbo, Grace Jones to Arletty and Tina Turner but also Kim Kardashian and Michelle Obama. Born in Tunisia in 1935 into a family of farmers, Azzedine Alaïa became passionate about fashion at a very early age. He took some lessons from his sculpture classes at the Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts) in Tunis and, as fashion “is not a man’s job in Tunisia”, he flew to Paris in 1956. He learned his trade in the shadows, patiently, with prestigious private clients like Louise de Vilmorin, Arletty or Greta Garbo. As his fame grew, his friends, notably Thierry Mugler, encouraged him to present his work in the form of a ready-made collection: Americans loved it, making a triumph of his “body conscious” style – tight-fitting clothes, in leather, lycra or stretch. His first decade of success (he designed clothes for the iconic Grace Jones and Tina Turner, received two “fashion Oscars”, and bought 5,000 square meters of space in the heart of Paris) was followed by a slump. But Alaïa was far from done. He designed new fashion shows in the 2000s, thanks to the support of the Prada and then Richemont groups: his fashion then became more refined, more diverse, and he definitively established himself as a master of couture. This portrait, supported by numerous archives, reveals a secretive designer, applying sculptural techniques to his dresses; and who, in all modesty (“I only make clothes for women”), ended up proving to the world that his craft was an art in its own right.