PARIS — “Trends, collections, seasons. I get so confused. … When I don’t want to create a collection, I simply don’t,” Azzedine Alaïa once said.
This oft-quoted remark has long been used to frame Alaïa as a great outsider to the contemporary fashion system.
At first glance, nothing seems further from Alaïa’s atemporal, self-determined approach than the calibrated operations of Christian Dior’s “beehive,” which allowed its founder to revolutionise fashion with 22 haute couture collections in just ten years. Not to mention that whereas Dior’s designs always began with a sketch, Alaïa did not draw, and would even cut entire garments himself.
And yet a rare double exhibition in Paris brings Christian Dior and Azzedine Alaïa in conversation — not as master and disciple, but as two couturiers united by an exacting vision of the silhouette. Curated by Olivier Saillard, and presented jointly at the Galérie Dior and Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, the project examines Alaïa both as a collector of Dior and as a designer who quietly extended his language, outside the logic of seasons and trends.
When Azzedine Alaïa came to Paris from Tunis with the dream of becoming a couturier, he joined Dior’s atelier for a four-day internship. Throughout his career, 30 Avenue Montaigne remained for him a lodestar — the ideal of a couture house defined by a signature line, architectural rigour and the pursuit of excellence in the absolute.
Of the more than 18,000 garments Alaïa collected during his life — an archive now managed by the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa — Dior’s designs are among the most represented, after those of Madame Grès and Cristóbal Balenciaga. The twin exhibitions draw on nearly 500 Christian Dior gowns found in this trove.
The Galerie Dior exhibit, which opened Nov. 20, displays a survey of Christian Dior looks along with some works for the brand by Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano. The show at Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, opening Monday, juxtaposes designs by Christian Dior with Alaïa’s own designs.
Dior’s cocktail dresses, which Alaïa said “seemed to hold themselves up,” fascinated him above all. The designers shared a taste for defined waists, sculpted shoulders, shapely hips and skirts with flowing volume, an obsessive exploration of black and grey in all its shades. “Throughout his career, Azzedine Alaïa’s work remained the silent witness to the youthful impressions that Dior’s suits and coats, short and long dresses, had evoked in him,” according to Saillard. Devotion to the silhouette would remain central to Alaïa’s work.
Neither man was born in Paris, yet both are inseparable from the city’s mythology. Dior chose Marlene Dietrich, a guest at his first show, as the ambassador of his earliest licences (for stockings). Alaïa, years later, would wait outside her building on Avenue Montaigne simply to observe her silhouette as she walked. They shared an obsessive adoration for attitude, the science of the walk — as stated by Honoré de Balzac: “When walking, women can show everything, but let nothing be seen.”
Azzedine Alaïa also shared with Christian Dior a quest for excellence and perfection, the idea of reaching “a point of finish,” as Dior called it, where after twenty fittings the designs seemed untouched. These fittings could be even more numerous for Alaïa, who might keep working on a design for several seasons before presenting it.
Unlike Dior, who created a new line each season, Alaïa remained faithful to a particular school of dress; signature shapes which he advanced through dynamic, less formal fabrics — free from corsets and the codes of low-cut seduction.
Time is an ever-present theme. But while Dior’s vision submits to a chronology — looking back with nostalgia at the Belle Époque, the eighteenth century, the rose garden of la Villa Les Rhumbs, in Granville — Azzedine Alaïa’s was more trans-historical. He could draw influences from the street as much as the desert, or from history spanning millennia.
The magic of the twin exhibitions is due to the designers’ affinities — both visual and symbolic — as well as their differences. At Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, a dress named Andalouse (Christian Dior, 1955) seems to dance with a gypsy dress by Azzedine Alaïa (2010s). From the entrance, the tone is set, with a Dior Boutique dress (1957) facing a cocktail dress created for a private client by Azzedine Alaïa at the same time, its label written in ballpoint pen.
Horsehair petticoats, faille, tulle — the interior of their garments is often as intricate as the exterior. A 1992 Alaïa suit is juxtaposed with a 1957 Sonatine ensemble by Dior — both the broderie anglaise and the “point d’esprit” tulle evoking their 18th century influences.
Christian Dior worshipped Marie Antoinette; for Azzedine Alaïa it was Madame de Pompadour. A dialogue also emerges between Dior’s embroideries and Alaïa’s perforated leathers.
A 1957 coat from Christian Dior’s last collection echoes in a houndstooth coat from 2017 — Azzedine Alaïa’s last collection — with both creators clearly marked by the influence of Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Filtered through Alaïa’s vision, Christian Dior is seen as a sculptor, far removed from theatrical clichés. Purity emerges, undermining Gabrielle Chanel’s famous quote that Dior “doesn’t dress women, he upholsters them!”
The Fondation Azzedine Alaïa exhibition brings together seventy designs by the two couturiers. The whole is impressive: In this atmosphere of an immaculate cathedral one imagines a conversation, a mutual admiration.
