The fashion world has put up a fashion exhibition to honor legendary fashion designer Azzedine Alaia who passed away on November last year. The exhibition which showcases some of his most extraordinary work, right through his prolific career from the early ‘80s to his very last masterpieces towards the end of 2017.
Over 60 rare garments (including his trademark zipped dress, the bandage dress, the corset belt, the stretch body, perforated leather) are displayed in the exhibition co-curated by Mark Wilson, Chief Curator of the Groninger Museum, alongside a series of specially commissioned architectural screens by Alaïa’s close friends, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Marc Newson, Kris Ruhs and Alaïa’s partner of many years, Christoph von Weyhe.
Photography depicting the processes of Alaïa’s craft, as well as personal quotes that offer more snapshots of his life and work adorn the walls of the space, such as: “My obsession is to make women beautiful. When you create with that in mid, things can’t go out of fashion.”
Mark Wilson speaking on the exhibition in an exclusive chat with Vogue said:
“I’ve known Azzedine for pretty much 22 years,” Wilson explained over the phone from Amsterdam on how the show came to be. “It just happened that [Maison Alaïa] were opening the store in London and they were approached by the Design Museum and I’d been talking to them too, so it was just this synergy that happened. When Azzedine and I went to see the space to talk about it, we realised that it’s not really large enough to do a massive retrospective so to speak. I told him that I didn’t really want to build walls in the space because I didn’t want it to feel closed off. Since it was the Design Museum I thought it was a great opportunity to have screens made so I asked him to select artists; the screens sort of work as backdrops for many of the outfits. It’s really the show he wanted to do. I really kept it that way.”
See some of the garments on display:
Source: Vogue.com