Alaïa under my skin
Azzedine Alaïa is one of the greatest couturiers of our time, and one of the most discreet. The man who wanted to be a sculptor models women’s bodies with his dresses like a second skin. Exclusive interview: Isabelle Cerboneschi, Paris. Photos: Isabelle Cerboneschi. Portrait: Buonomo & Cometti. Archives: Isabelle Cerboneschi.
In Paris, in a little street in the Marais district, there is a place of perdition for girls. I say ‘girls’ because you have to get over all the prejudices about age, shape (or lack of it), attitude and appearance to understand how much you’re going to lose in that place: rue de Moussy. It’s a discreet door, like the warehouse door it once was; you ring the bell, go in, and then you’re screwed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re well or badly screwed. This is Azzedine Alaïa, known as the Master, one of the world’s greatest couturiers, even if his small stature would suggest otherwise.
Hanging amid the brick walls and the works of Julian Schnabel – one of his friends – are dresses, jackets, skirts and coats that have the power to sublimate a woman’s body, provided she is ready for it. Provided she’s prepared to be transformed into an anatomical bombshell, but a modest bombshell, in black, white and beige, without the artifice of a deep décolleté, just by the magic of a few tightenings here and there that have the same effect as cosmetic surgery, sometimes at the same price, but perfectly absorbable. With the seams like scars, stitched and braided, they too are beautiful to behold. The women who indulge in Alaïa have no desire to be cured. Only a bank ban can put an end to this addiction.
Azzedine Alaïa arrived in Paris in 1957 at an undetermined age, because age is ‘in the mind’ and there are too many official birth dates in circulation to rely on (1936, 1939, 1940?). On the other hand, the fact that this Tunisian, the son of farmers who studied fine arts in Tunis, arrived in Paris at the end of the 1950s in a France that was not very welcoming to foreigners (read Albert Camus again if you ever have), is not insignificant.
He was first welcomed by a great French family, that of the Marquise de Mazan, before becoming the intendant of the Countess de Blégiers, of whom he kept the children and a very fond memory. He also designed dresses for her. He rubbed shoulders with the high society of Gaullian France, made friends with Louise de Vilmorin and, in a different style, more cheeky, with Arletty. He worked for Dior (five days), for Guy Laroche (two seasons) and for Thierry Mugler (until the end of the 70s).
In 1981, when he launched his brand, he realised that times had changed and that the healthy bodies of the 80s had a great need to exult. It was the advent of what is known as body consciousness, a fashion that worked well for this man who dreamed of being a sculptor. He dressed Greta Garbo, Tina Turner, Grace Jones… But we’re not going to re-tell his story, it’s better to listen to him tell it himself, in a language that smells of all the suns, the sea and the dusty earth of North African villages. It’s a language that he has had the good taste not to have tamed, nor hidden under layers of sharp talk to blend into the backdrop of the Paris he loves so much. He has had the elegance not to try to go unnoticed, not to try to round off the angles, apart from those of women’s hips and behinds, which obsess him. His voluble glibness, with its accent, takes us to other parts of the world that are drenched in light, to the south at any rate, where carrots are eaten sprinkled with cumin.
Subtle transition back to the table: we were dreaming of a tajine and we had lunch of a salad with fresh herbs and a roastbeef-mashed potatoes prepared by his cook, with red fruit and curd cheese for dessert. We talked about dogs, cats and friends – speaking of friends, Naomi (Campbell) made a phone call, but he said he’d call her back – and we laughed a lot. Because, even though Azzedine Alaïa was in the middle of preparing his collections and there was palpable tension at the table, he is a perfect host: the kitchen door is designed to let people in, not worries…
It’s with the Master that we have an appointment this January, a week after the spring-summer 2009 haute couture shows. He is in the middle of preparing his collections. He hasn’t presented his creations during Fashion Week for just over ten years. But he shows his collections whenever and to whomever he chooses. He picks his audience, his dates, the moment he decides a dress is ready to be launched into the world. In fact, he does absolutely everything, from the pattern to the cutting, fittings and sewing.
He is the absolute monarch at home. Even if, financially speaking, he’s not exactly independent. In 2000, he signed an agreement with Patrizio Bertelli, Prada’s managing director, and joined the group. In 2007, he bought back his shares and sold them to the Richemont group. As he says, today’s couturier cannot survive without a financial partner. He just had the luxury of choosing one.
So we have an appointment for lunch in his private mansion, although we don’t know how to describe this place that is part boutique, part hotel, part workshop, part office, part home, part gallery. Three buildings rolled into one, with this huge kitchen open to those he invites around the huge table. Didine, the St Bernard ‘baby’, just a few months old and almost as big as a pony, is slumped behind the couturier in his eternal Chinese suit. Oum, the cat with the temper of a dog, is not invited to the meal. Oum in homage to Oum Kalthoum, of course.
INTERVIEW
When you wear one of your clothes, you get the feeling that anything can happen, even a man in your life.
Azzedine Alaïa: That’s what it’s made for, I think!
It’s rare to find a garment that makes you want to dance.
I think a lot about the woman who’s going to wear it. I never project onto myself, thinking that I’m the one who makes fashion, that it belongs to me. Nor do I think in terms of trends or modern or non-modern. I follow the moment, but above all I think about women, and how they can feel good and beautiful. Clothes are so important!
Clothes say something about us before we even open our mouths. Sometimes you get the impression that your dresses are made up of contradictions: they’re modest, but at the same time they hide nothing.
Something has to happen with a garment, it has to trigger something. When I think of a garment, I imagine a woman walking, entering a place, with her children, with her husband.
A sculptor starts with a material and models a shape that seems ideal, whereas you start with the body that you resculpt. You choose to make it tighter in one place, loosen it here, show it there.
I try to leave it free at the same time, but I’m the one who has to arrange the body.
Do you have an ideal in mind?
No. When you design a garment for one person in particular, it has to fit all bodies.
But that’s not always the case.
We sometimes think that a dress won’t look good on such and such a person, and in the end the result is fantastic! The woman who wears it is already free of her body, of her faults, of everything. She doesn’t care how others look at her, even if she’s a little pudgy. That gives other women courage.
Your dresses mark a waistline that sometimes doesn’t exist, drawing a curve. Is that how you like women’s bodies, all curves?
Yes. I wanted to be a sculptor when I was at art school. That’s where my interest in the curves of the body comes from. And it’s also very Mediterranean, this passion for the waist, the drop of the back, the bottom. Everyone tells me that my bums are pretty. When I was little, I used to follow women from behind to get a better look at them. Because in front of them I was embarrassed and I didn’t want to embarrass them by the way I looked at them. I noticed very early on that, when you look at a woman, there are certain looks… Women know straight away if there’s admiration or affection. They sense it, like an animal. And me, even the Sisters of Sion in Tunis, I thought they were elegant, with their nun’s dress, their cornette, their belt with the cross hanging down. I found it sexy as hell! And you could hardly see the ankle! I used to follow them from behind, so I could see how they walked and how their clothes moved. When I’m in Arab countries, I look at women’s backs, because if I look at them from the front, I get told off! That’s why I like my behinds (laughs).
Is there a woman you haven’t already dressed and for whom you’d dream of creating an outfit?
Honestly, I can assure you, I don’t think about that. When you’re a couturier and you make ready-to-wear clothes, you dream of dressing every woman! I love it when a woman comes to the boutique because she loves it. The desire comes from her. It’s even better than when you say to yourself: ‘Oh, I’d love to dress that person!
What is your vision of elegance?
Elegance can be encountered in any industry, in any environment, anywhere. I can find very elegant people in Barbès. Some kids, even thugs, have a kind of elegance. I also admire the elegance of the English court. For me, it’s perfect elegance. But it can also be perfect in the suburbs. I make no distinction between elegance. Peasants are wildly elegant; soldiers are elegant; in Pigalle, there are a few whores who have a certain elegance. But there are people from wealthy families who have no elegance at all. In India, people have great elegance, while some live in atrocious poverty. Elegance is not a question of education, culture or means. You have to be as natural as possible.
In times of crisis, such as these, there is a greater than usual need for clothes that are timeless. And you, for example, have never stopped selling certain models that have become classics.
Yes, always. I don’t differentiate between clothes. These days, you can’t work the way you used to. When I started, every season we’d drop everything and start again from scratch. There wasn’t a single item of clothing that we’d take back the following season. Today, it’s better to make them all over again. They’ll be different anyway. Each time I remake a model, the pattern is different, the material is different and the proportions change. So it’s both seen and unknown.
You talk about materials; can we imagine what the discovery of Lycra meant to you?
Before, if you wanted dresses that were close to the body, you had to wear pintucks. With Lycra, there’s no need to use girdles to tighten the waist and at the same time women’s bodies are freer. Even if they’re tight, they can still walk. I once made a dress that was barely this wide (he spreads his hands twenty centimetres apart). When I saw it hanging narrowly on its hanger, it looked like a Giacometti. But the material was so supple and elastic that the girl was able to fit into it. It was all about the material and the way it was cut.
Your dresses are like a second skin. Haven’t you ever wanted to go even further, to make a skin dress, which would be a perfume in fact? One that would dress, but without fabric?
It’s the woman herself who can create that effect. I remember clients, when I was doing made-to-measure, who got completely naked in front of me and yet didn’t look naked. They undressed so naturally, as if I wasn’t there or that I was someone they knew very well. That’s dressed nudity. Some women, on the other hand, when they lift their skirt like that, they cause a scandal!
Sorry I misspoke, I was wondering whether you ever thought of making a perfume that would be like a virtual dress.
Every time I’ve been asked, I’ve replied that I’d like it to be like mineral water. You wouldn’t smell it, but you’d feel a presence. And yet I’m from North Africa, I come from a Mediterranean country that loves perfume. But I don’t like strong perfumes at all. I’d like a perfume that you couldn’t tell what it was. You come in and you’re fresh all the time, like after a shower.
A brand new baby smell, in fact?
Almost. Like new skin.
You were one of the first, along with Thierry Mugler, with whom you worked, to choose to resurrect the female body that had been buried under loose fabrics in the 1970s. Why did you make this choice?
When I started out in ready-to-wear, I dressed aristocratic women. But being around fat, older women all day, asking me: ‘You’re making me a suit, you’re making the collar like this, it’s got to look good! So I said to myself: if a girl’s got a nice body, we’ve got to see it!
But how did this ‘body consciousness’ trend come about, when it was totally against the grain?
It was a time when boys and girls dressed alike: waists were no longer marked, they were straight, like boys’ waists, no longer tight at all. It was a freedom that wasn’t a freedom at all, because when nothing is held in place, the body lets go and you start to put on weight and you don’t realise it, because you’re wearing baggy trousers, men’s clothes. And women forget about their bodies.
Yes, but you still need to be confident enough about your body to wear your clothes!
Yes, but above all you have to be sure of yourself too, and not care about the way other people look at you or what they think. Some women are embarrassed by the way people look at them in the street. But it’s better to be annoyed by someone following you in the street, because the day they change pavement when they see you, you won’t be happy either! So it’s better to have someone running behind you! To my friends who have 16-year-old daughters, I say: ‘Let her get her rocks off with that body! It’s a very short time in a woman’s life…’. They’ve got this perfect body, no worries yet, no wrinkles, no bruises, they can stay awake all night, they’re fit, healthy, they’ve got it all, so let them make the most of it! You’ve got a great body, so you seduce with it, and the day it doesn’t fit any more, you cover yourself up! Or maybe you’re a cheeky old woman and you carry on (laughs)… I have clients who aren’t all young and who still wear briefs. They’re like a young girl starting out in life, because there’s no age for clothes. There’s no age for anything really. You’re attacked by age, but inside you’re fine. It’s your health that’s failing you. So while you’re at it, make the most of it.
Is age really in your head?
It’s all in your head, yes. I tell women: ‘Let off steam, show yourself off, do everything! Some customers tell me: ‘Oh, at my age, I don’t wear sleeveless dresses any more! Just put on a bodysuit with sleeves underneath or a t-shirt. And put on your dress!
You have a talent for encouraging women to be daring.
Because my career has been made by women.
When you worked for Guy Laroche, I read that you were also the Intendant of the Marquise de Mazan?
I didn’t stay long with the Marquise de Mazan, but I did spend five years with the Countess de Blégiers and I have very fond memories of her. I kept in touch with all of them. She had a little girl, Diane. When I arrived, she was 4 and her brother Guy was 7. I looked after them, I took them for walks. At the time, it was the end of the Algerian war and this French family, this aristocratic family, took me in. I lived in the flat with the children, at a time that was not favourable for an African. Well, they never asked me any questions, never tried to find out where I’d come from! I had four years of happiness…
But it was also a world and an era that no longer exist today.
Anything can happen. You have to be attentive to every moment and observe life as it is, taking periods as they come. We know the past, the future is obscure, we know nothing at all. You can never be sure of what’s going to happen. For me, every time I make a little plan to go on holiday, it fails.
Do you often go on holiday?
I don’t go! Not for three years. The last time, everything was ready: the suitcases, the bags. Five times I changed the plane ticket! On the fifth time, I said no: there was only a day or two left to spend there. What holiday? There was no point in going any more. And it wasn’t even a holiday anyway, it was to visit family. I’ve had a house in Sidi Bou Saïd for twelve years, but I’ve never lived there. And if I never go there in my life, well, it doesn’t matter! It’s in my head. I’m not someone who’s attached to things, I’m just passing through places. I’m not envious at all, that’s why I’ve got rid of everything. I don’t like the word owner. I prefer to be the occupant of a space, for a period of my life.
Here, in this building in the Marais, you’re an occupier, like your cats?
Just like everywhere else. We are occupiers, me, my cats, my friends and the people who work with me. We share all the spaces, we live in them. The people who work with me spend more time here than they do with their children, their husbands… The workplace always has to be looked after, because you spend more time here than you do at home. What’s home? You come home, you’re already exhausted from work, you make dinner, then you have to go to bed, get up early and go back to work. It’s not easy for women. Fortunately, they’re strong, stronger than men. They faint at the drop of a hat, but they’re strong (laughs). I was going to the opera one evening and suddenly I saw a woman I know very well, very skittish, always covered in furs, always complaining about catching cold from the slightest draught. It was snowing, it was cold, and she was wearing an evening dress, by Dior I think. She got out of the car, threw off her coat, her dress was completely revealing, and I grabbed her on the stairs and said, ‘I thought you were cold! She replied: ‘You idiot, people have to see my dress! She was standing there in a draught, with the snow and everything, and she just wanted us to see her dress!
When you arrived in Paris, did you ever think you’d become a couturier?
I didn’t think about being a couturier at all. I wanted to live in Paris and I was happy with anything.
In the 90s, you did a mini-collection for Tati: it was haute couture flirting with the cheapest brand on the market. You were a precursor: today, many couturiers and designers work with H&M. What did you learn from this collaboration, if anything?
I’ve learned a lot. It happened thanks to my friend Julian Schnabel. He wanted tarpaulin with the famous big pattern of houndstooth. This motif was actually that of the awning of a French bistro, which had existed before Tati, and which Tati bought and used as an emblem for its brand. So they gave him some canvas and Julian Schnabel painted on it. When I saw the canvas, I said to myself: ‘Hey, that’s a nice houndstooth, what if I used it for jeans? I phoned Tati and asked them if they would give me some canvas. They said, ‘I’d be delighted to! They asked me if I could make a collection for them. I told them it would be too expensive and wouldn’t fit in with their image. So I offered to make them a T-shirt, some running shoes and a bag, free of charge. They were happy. Shortly afterwards, it appeared in Elle magazine.
And what did that bring you?
It gave me a different way of thinking about fashion. That shop fascinated me, because every time I went to Tunisia, there were Tati bags all over the plane. The poor workers would stuff them with things to take back home. The success of this bag is insane! Now it’s H&M. I love H&M.
Would you design for H&M?
I would, yes. But at the moment, I don’t have the time.
You talk about time, but when do you consider a collection to be finished?
I don’t! I can assure you that anyone who says a collection is finished may have a genius in their head, so that everything is finished.
Would your dream be to never let go of a dress?
No, my dream would be to make a dress without having to calculate the time or worry about when it should be finished and presented. That’s the dream! But today, that’s not possible. So it’s better to dream.
Can a couturier survive today without financial support?
No, it’s not possible. It was when I started. But it’s also a struggle: you can’t do this, you’re on edge, you can’t afford to make things, you can’t afford to order fabrics… When you make a collection, you have to spend a lot. Even getting models these days isn’t easy. We do fittings on one person for a month. What young person can afford that? Unless it’s a friend of theirs, or they get a free model. Even the big names these days have to be in a group.
You were allied with the Prada group, then you bought out your shares; now you’re allied with the Richemont group. Even though this group is more involved in watchmaking than in fashion, its chairman, Johann Rupert, apparently allows the brands a fair amount of independence.
Yes, I really like this man, he’s a visionary, he’s got his own direction. As far as independence is concerned, that was also true with Prada: I was free. The proof is that I still have my shoes made there. Someone mentioned divorce: it wasn’t a divorce at all. I’m still friends with them. There are very few people with whom I don’t get on well, very few. Those with whom it’s definitely no are few in number.
You always need a bit of no to get a lot of yes.
(Laughs.) I don’t like human stupidity. But I do like people. Every time I meet someone new, I tell myself I’m going to learn something from them.
What’s the best life lesson you’ve ever received from someone?
I can’t talk about lessons, but about what I’ve been able to capture or see, things that nourish you, where you say to yourself that if it hadn’t been for this, I might not have done that… When I was little, if it hadn’t been for my grandmother and my grandfather, a police officer, who were both quite free, and if I hadn’t had a fantastic childhood, I don’t know… My grandfather used to take me to the cinema once a week, I’d see the film four times, he’d come and get me at the last screening. I saw all the films and learnt the songs and costumes by heart. There was also a midwife in Tunisia, who was French. I spent Saturdays with her, had lunch and slept over. And when I arrived in Paris, I met Louise de Vilmorin. I couldn’t have hoped for a better encounter, as a French woman!
You’re in the middle of preparing your collections, even though you haven’t been on the calendar of the Chambre de la couture et du prêt-à-porter for ten years. The pace of all these collections has become very fast: there’s ready-to-wear, couture, the cruise collections, the pre-collections…
This period of clothing debauchery must come to an end. This crisis should make us aware that this rhythm must change. Journalists who want to keep abreast of all the news in this business spend more time travelling than writing!
But for couturiers and designers too, the pace is frantic. Doesn’t it kill the imagination?
There’s no time to rest between collections. That’s why fashion goes round in circles like this.
By presenting your collections at your own pace, you’ve given yourself the luxury of time.
Yes, and despite that, I have less time. I don’t do fashion shows, but it’s the same thing: four collections in a year is a lot. And there aren’t many of us: in the studio, I only have one assistant.
But you do exactly what you like, the way you like it. Are you a happy man?
Yes, I’m a really happy person all the time, I thank God. And I meet a lot of interesting people! That’s why I don’t have the time. For family, friends, people I want to see fairly often, we have dinners or lunches here: it’s the only free time I have.
People who love you come to you.
They come to me. I say that I travel on my chair in the studio (laughs).
There was a little book by Xavier de Maistre, from the end of the 18th century, called Voyage autour de ma chambre.
Yes, that’s a bit like me. Do you know what luxury I’d like to have? Someone to read to me! Because I don’t have time to read at all. I work until 3am-4am. If I want to read, my eyes burn and I can’t do it. So with me, a book stays open for a year so I can finish it. I wait until I leave for London by train or plane to read. And on the plane, when I’m tired, I sleep. So I take two or three books and I read two lines from one or the other and I go through them like that. Perhaps the only time I have available is when I’m ill. But to have someone reading for you, ah! how wonderful! That’s a luxury I’d die for!
You should ask.
But I can’t right now. The person would have to stay up from midnight to 3am: he’s not going to make it! I need to find a bug who likes to stay up, or who has insomnia (laughs). I used to take an assistant with me to Italy, because he was a good reader. And while I was working, he was reading. Poor guy! And in the morning, instead of going to sleep, he wouldn’t leave me alone. So I said to him: ‘Take the books from the factory and read to us.
What book would you like us to read to you?
Il y en a beaucoup !There are so many!
A whole body of literature to catch up on…
Even if I don’t catch up, it doesn’t matter. I tell myself that someone else has read it, and that’s good. I’m letting him have that extra knowledge, even though I don’t know him (and he starts laughing).
