Azzedine Alaia: The Couturier At The Design Museum

On May 10th, Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier, the first exhibition to be shown in the UK on the legendary designer, opens to the public at the Design Museum. Conceived and co-curated by Azzedine Alaïa himself, prior to his death in November 2017, the exhibition explores his extraordinary work, spanning 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. Inspired by and complementing the garments on display, the commissioned works are the perfect backdrop to Alaïa’s exceptional creations which have shaped the course of fashion history over the past few decades.

Last week, as the finishing touches were being made to the exhibition, Voguespoke with Mark Wilson, who has previously worked on a series of exhibitions with the designer, all around the world. “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.”

Working closely together for months on the exhibition, Alaïa’s sudden death in November 2017 might have meant the end of show, however, Wilson and Maison Alaïa decided to go ahead, especially upon discovering the vast amount of work Alaïa had been masterfully labouring on. “I have to say I was really kind of surprised because after he passed... about two weeks later we decided to continue with the show and I went to the atelier and he had really been working on so many outfits for the show,” Wilson continues. “For part of the exhibitions we do, he remakes all the outfits. They're elongated and custom-fit to the mannequins. He'd been working on so much so the selection is pretty much 90 percent of what he and I originally discussed."

Having worked together previously on exhibitions from Rome to the Netherlands, the exhibition at the Design Museum offers viewers rare access into Alaïa’s most recent couture creations. “The last show we did together was the gallery at Borghese in 2015, so we wanted to include groupings of outfits since that exhibition, so that's specifically the stuff he had the atelier working on. They've done an amazing job because they've of course continued since he passed and finished all of the outfits to his specification.”

Clearly an almost impossible question to ask both a close friend of Alaïa and someone so close to the project, but does Wilson have a highlight of the exhibition? “I can't really say a favourite piece but the Marc Newson screen is just incredible. Just beautiful. It's 10 metres long by 3.5 metres high so it is monumental. In front of that, in the openings of the show, we are showing the black chiffon outfits with the rivets from Azzedine's last couture show. Naomi Campbell wore the one with the velvet. It's seven pieces. They look amazing. I saw him working on them before the show and it's all the variations of that. And again, that was what he and I discussed. That was what was going to open the show, with Marc Newson's screen behind.”

As someone who was privileged enough to know Azzedine both professionally and personally, through a friendship that spanned a few decades, what does Mark adore most about The Couturier, Azzedine Alaïa and hope that people will take away from the exhibition? “You can't time his clothes. That's what I think is amazing and we kind of downplay that. I don't think dates are so important. You look at his clothes and they could have been made in the future or the past. I think that's what makes him so special. Timeless. I mean I cannot tell you how much I loved that man. When we were in Rome for about 10 days to do the whole installation of the exhibition in 2015 we just had a blast. We had so much fun. So much fun. I can't explain how or why but he changed my life. I love doing shows – this is what I do as a a curator – but really I did it to hang out with him because I love him so much… He was incredible.”