{"id":8246,"date":"2017-11-20T14:06:47","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T19:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.garmento.net\/?p=8246"},"modified":"2017-11-20T14:08:33","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T19:08:33","slug":"beauty-creativity-family-azzedine-alaia-remembered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/beauty-creativity-family-azzedine-alaia-remembered\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty, creativity and family: Azzedine Ala\u00efa remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beauty, creativity and family: Azzedine Ala\u00efa remembered<\/h1>\n
By\u00a0Godfrey Deeny<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0–\u00a0\u00a0
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If there was anything Azzedine Ala\u00efa, the revered designer who died aged 77 this weekend, enjoyed more than actually making clothes, it was sitting down to a meal with his \u201cfamily.\u201d By family, Ala\u00efa \u2013\u00a0who reinvented the modern silhouette of women \u2013\u00a0meant an extended tribe of supermodels, <\/span>bold face names, stars, heavy hitter artists and a large gang of adoring staff, who would sit down to lunch or dinner in the kitchen of his Marais headquarters. <\/span>Where, the gentlemanly and intensely opinionated Azzedine would see everyone served before he touched his own plate.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Alaia at Galleria Borghese – Foto: Ansa<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For fashionistas, dining at Ala\u00efa\u2019s table was a rite of passage. Like a golfer playing St Andrew’s or a country singer performing at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, if you had not broke bread in Ala\u00efa\u2019s\u00a0cuisine<\/i>, you remained a fashion undergraduate. The half dozen times I\u2019ve dined there, under a photo-montage of Marlon Brando by his best buddy Julian Schnabel, there was always a supermodel by Ala\u00efa\u2019s side \u2013 Naomi Campbell at one languid lunch for 30; Stephanie Seymour for a post-opening dinner of 45, Yasmin Le Bon at a Harper\u2019s Bazaar shoot brunch. Most of these beauties called him Papa, which made sense seeing he\u2019s put them up over the years in his three-room upstairs Inn. Inside his rambling multi-staircase home, an amalgamation of a one-time factory, a cut-stone mansion\u2019s fa\u00e7ade, art gallery, Marc Newson-designed shoe shop and warehouse, crammed full of huge paintings, all by Schnabel, located on <\/span>rue de Moussy.<\/span>
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\nLadies came because no designer better redefined a woman\u2019s body than Ala\u00efa, with his sculpted, <\/span>figure hugging architectural line. Ironic then, that Azzedine always dressed so simply \u2013\u00a0in black cotton Chinese pajamas. <\/span>Phyiscally he was tiny \u2013 but his influence was immense. Before Ala\u00efa, women could certainly look exotic, alluring and beautiful, but Ala\u00efa turned them into superheroes, an inspiration that continues today. It\u2019s 37 years since his first runway <\/span>show, and 33 since he was voted Paris Designer of the <\/span>Year, when Grace Jones (who donned Ala\u00efa in\u00a0A View to a Kill<\/a>) famously carried the <\/span>diminuative Azzedine in her arms on stage. This decade, he dressed two First Ladies, Carla Bruni and Michelle Obama, as well as Kim and Kendall, Rihanna and Ashanti, and let\u2019s not forget Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes. And no runway season is complete without references to Ala\u00efa\u2019s\u00a0oeuvre<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 seen in recent years in Christopher Kane, Marios Schwab, Roland Mouret and Victoria Beckham, to name a few.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Azzedine Ala\u00efa with Grace Jones – AFP\/Georges Bendrihem<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Born into a landowning family, he arrived Paris in 1957, leaving his native Tunis for a job at Christian Dior. \u201cI lasted only a week, they must not have liked my face\u201d he would cackle. After stints at Guy Laroche and Mugler, he opened his own house in 1980 and began creating for the likes of Greta Garbo, Arletty or Louise de Vilmorin, in between designing Crazy Horse strippers; before his break-out moment as an <\/span>enfant in the arms of Grace Jones, nearly a foot taller than Ala\u00efa, just 1.6 meters in his black Nike sneakers.<\/span>
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\n\u201cAt college, I quickly realized that I could never be a great sculptor, so I changed paths, which was easier as I always loved fashion,\u201d Ala\u00efa once told me at one \u201csmall lunch\u201d in 2000. Ala\u00efa was such a welcoming host, with frequent dinners of 60 people, his chef took to calling the kitchen the Gare du Nord. He was the Andy Warhol of Paris fashion. On <\/span>ocassions he staged massive happenings in his gallery, like the MR2 Kabarett of artist Mike Bouchet last year, where waiters served wine from jerry <\/span>cas; angry sailors staged performance art wrestling matches and women slid out a giant elephant\u2019s backside. During fashion seasons, le tout Paris showed up chez Ala\u00efa, from Kanye West and Pedro Almodovar to Kim Kardashian and Livia Firth. All perched around the table, some tossing scraps to his favorite hound, a massive St Bernard named <\/span>Dedine, Linda Evangelista\u2019s nickname for Azzedine.<\/span>
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\nRecalled Naomi Campbell at a late supper:\u00a0 \u201cThe day I met <\/span>him, when I was 16 years old, I was with Amanda de Cadenet and I had had my bag stolen. I didn’t speak French and I didn’t know anyone. So I go along with Amanda, who has a meeting with Azzedine, and somehow we formed a connection even though I didn’t speak French and he didn’t speak English.\u201d Taking matters in hand, Ala\u00efa called Naomi\u2019s <\/span>mother, and said \u2018look, she’s young, I’ll take care of her,” and Campbell moved <\/span>in to her own room, chez Azzedine.<\/span>
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\nObsessing over women is what Ala\u00efa did best. Major designers rarely grant personal fittings, but Ala\u00efa would see multiple clients \u2013\u00a0gazing adoringly at a Middle Eastern princess one minute, a movie star the next, before disappearing with a model into his immense fitting room clad in red velvet drapes, gigantic mirrors and a immense broken-plate portrait of Azzedine, by Schnabel, where the subject\u2019s eyes follow you around the room. His upstairs studio loft space was crammed full of beautiful clothes: racks of bustier dresses in macram\u00e9 laser cut leather; slinky ribbed cocktails in viscose or wonderful suede Robin Hood jackets with his signature grommets.<\/span>
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\nDespite his immense gifts, Ala\u00efa did have an erratic career. He drove the American department stores crazy, by refusing to show during the official Paris schedule forcing them <\/span>make return trips across the Atlantic, which eventually they stopped doing. And, his production has always been limited, partly because he sews many of the prototypes by hand himself. \u00a0\u201cYou know what the secret of my clothes is? Hard work. A great architect is not a great architect if he does not build buildings, simple as that. Even a straight skirt is still is tricky for me,\u201d he once explained.<\/span>
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\nAnd one stage, after his beloved twin sister died in the 1990s, he almost completely stopped showing. Staging a show clearly demanded huge mental effort for Ala\u00efa, who once literally could not speak after one runway event so drained he was by the exertion. So, in 2000, he sold his business to the Prada Group, igniting a fresh burst of <\/span>craativity.<\/span><\/p>\n

All told, I attended six Ala\u00efa shows, including his final runway event was this July. Gallery owner Kamel Mennour; Sydney Picasso, daughter-in-law of Pablo; ex Culture Minister Jack Lang and even fellow designer Nicolas Ghesqui\u00e8re of Louis Vuitton sat front row on metal school chairs. Combining supple metal tracks, leather strips and taut knits into clothes of great power \u2013 like snakeskin jackets and coatdresses held together with micro grommets that won Ala\u00efa a standing ovation from the 400 guests. A final reminder that Ala\u00efa women manage to look like they could conquer the world at the same time as they seduced it.<\/p>\n

Azzedine had little doubt he was a member of the creative Pantheon of fashion, up there with Dior, Chanel and Schiaparelli. Yet, he never hurried after honors. He\u2019s almost certainly the only designer ever to turn down one of France\u2019s greatest distinctions,\u00a0Chevalier de la L\u00e9gion d’honneur in 2008. \u201cI could not accept, because I do not like the decorations. Certainly, people deserve recognition for doing lots in life\u2026 Now, if the Queen of England awarded me something, I\u2019d accept that. Especially if it had been the Queen Mother!\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he did love his Rome exhibition of 2015, a brilliant display in the Baroque Galleria Borghese, entitled Azzedine Ala\u00efa. Couture\/Sculpture, where classical statuary was posed beisde his iconic looks. Ala\u00efa \u2018s drop dead, mid-90s Screen Goddess columns entirely in sync with Roman beauties in marble togas, and suavely in juxtaposition to the room\u2019s key piece \u2013 Paolina Bonaparte posing as a Venus for Antonio Canova. Bernini\u2019s magnificent Daphne and Apollo, where the subject\u2019s hands grow into trees, surrounded by Azzedine\u2019s organic Africa period \u2013 works from 1992 that include shells and horse hair. Most memorably, Ala\u00efa\u2019s justly famed Crocodile jacket looked at home when hung between two burly Roman generals in matching brown marble.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a visitor in this beautiful city, yet my fashion looks very at home,\u201d smiled Ala\u00efa during a private tour. For such a proud man, I never recall him being more fulfilled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Courtesy of FashionNetwork.com All rights reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/article>\n

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Beauty, creativity and family: Azzedine Ala\u00efa remembered By\u00a0Godfrey Deeny\u00a0\u00a0–\u00a0\u00a0November 19, 2017 If there was anything Azzedine Ala\u00efa, the revered designer who died aged 77 this weekend, enjoyed more than actually making clothes, it was sitting down to a meal with his \u201cfamily.\u201d By family, Ala\u00efa \u2013\u00a0who reinvented the modern silhouette of women \u2013\u00a0meant an extended…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"2.10.7","language":"ru","enabled_languages":["en","es","de","fr","ru"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"de":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8246"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8259,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions\/8259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}