Alaïa Afore Alaïa – The Genesis of a Style

“At the time, I wasn’t making collections. I was sewing for clients. He didn’t ask many questions. He understood and analyzed.
Azzedine Alaïa

Alaïa before Alaïa is an original exhibition, conceived and produced by the foundation that the designer had wished to create several years before his death.
Through a sum of archival documents, photographs and drawings for the most part presented for the first time, the exhibition analyzes the years of apprenticeship that separate the young aspiring designer about to leave Tunis for Paris in the 1950s, until the blossoming of the Alaïa phenomenon at the beginning of the 1980s.
A rigorous selection of dresses and creations from his early years, a choice of models that revealed to the public more than a style, a founding work from the late 1970s dialogue with timeless clothes, a true intimate geography of his unchanged inspirations.