Through his craft, Azzedine Alaïa celebrated the female body in all shapes and sizes. From his early days in the 1970s when he was making costumes for the girls of the Crazy Horse cabaret and dressing Greta Garbo, to bedecking stars like Grace Jones in the 1980s and more recently the Kardashian sisters, the concept of womanhood was always in the forefront of his designs. Out of the public eye, ensconced in his atelier at Rue de Moussy in Paris, which also housed his apartment, showroom and shop, Alaïa passionately unfolded his mastery in his own terms. A well known perfectionist—a dress could take anywhere from five weeks to five years—he eschewed working from drawings, preferring instead to drape and sculpt by hand on his models, meticulously hand-cutting all his own patterns. “He’s the master of cut and fit, a sculptor”, as Wilson has pointed out. For Alaïa, the eroticism of the female body was not something to shy away from but on the contrary something to be embraced. From contouring the bosom and buttocks with seams, to draping the whole body in leopard print, there is a powerful female sexuality exclaimed by his garments.

The garments on display have been grouped by Alaïa himself to reflect themes that marked his career, such as velvet, African-inspired, and bandage dresses, each one showcased against a unique installation by an eclectic selection of artists and designers that include Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Marc Newson, Kris Ruhs, and Tatiana Trouvé. The bespoke backdrops soulfully complement the couturier’s sculptural creations without detracting from their beauty and craftsmanship, which visitors can comprehensively explore as they walk around his creations.

Accompanying Alaïa’s garments, which include all of his iconic designs such as the zipped dress, the bandage dress, the corset belt and the stretch body, is fashion photography that captures the imitable allure of his creation as worn by some of the most famous models of the era, including Naomi Campbell, Alaïa’s muse and long time friend, whose relationship goes back to 1987 when the designer took sixteen-year-old Naomi under his wing effectively becoming a father figure for her. On display, there are also pictures capturing more intimate moments inside the secretive Maison Alaïa, such as Alaïa’s sought-after dinners where guests would congregate around the kitchen table in his house to eat, drink and talk, as well as documentingt the intricacies of the production process at his atelier.

Dressed in his signature black Chinese cotton pyjamas, Alaïa is pictured among friends and clients, models and fabrics, relaxed or hard at work, always with an unassuming look of authentic contentment, for he would not have wanted to be doing anything else than what he was doing. “For me, fashion is the body,” Alaïa said in 1982, and later, “I make clothes, women make fashion,” a few of the designer’s quotes that are featured in the exhibition, and indeed, as the exhibition evocatively demonstrates, his work was never about being fashionable but rather about being feminine, a timeless quality if there ever was one.