AT THE FONDATION AZZEDINE ALAÏA, FASHION WHISPERS
INSIDE THE MASTERS OF HAUTE COUTURE EXHIBITION WITH AZZEDINE ALAÏA AND CHRISTIAN DIOR
INSIDE LA FONDATION AZZEDINE ALAÏA, PARIS, ASTHETIK MAGAZINE GOT A FIRST LOOK AT THE LATEST EXHIBITION ON SHOW, HIGHLIGHTING TWO MASTERS OF HAUTE COUTURE.
Written by Kristen Vonnoh
Edited by: Gabriel Mealor-Pritchard
A short walk from the Hotel de Ville metro stop, you’ll find a hidden gem. With an elegant courtyard and an understated entrance, there is the Fondation Alaïa. The exhibitions presented in this space are as elegant as the space itself. Inside the latest exhibition at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, conversations fade into whispers, with friends leaning in toward each other while admiring the work of the couturier. “C’est magnifique,” said a visitor, pointing to the details of the strapless Dior dress.
“Azzedine Alaïa and Christian Dior: Two Masters of Haute Couture”, curated by Olivier Saillard, is not an exhibition that demands attention but earns it. Bringing together nearly seventy designs by the two couturiers, the show unfolds as a quiet dialogue across decades, between Dior’s revolutionary 1950s silhouettes and Alaïa’s later, deeply sculptural work, inspired by his time as an intern at Dior.
White flowers frame the spaces where the garments are exhibited, softening the architecture and brightening the space. Yet, despite the richly layered scenography, nothing overwhelms the beauty of the garments themselves. A Christian Dior dinner jacket from the Haute Couture Spring-Summer 1948 collection immediately draws the eye: Pondichery, from the Ligne Envol collection. Crafted in natural linen canvas, the jacket features a plunging back, a Mandarin collar, and short sleeves with wide turn-ups. It is entirely embroidered with branches, birds, and butterflies in multicoloured metallic threads, embellished with green glass cabochons, silvered sequins, synthetic pearls, and mother-of-pearl shells. Its cut, the most singular of the Ligne Envol appears to give the piece a literal sense of lift, as if it might take flight, echoing Dior’s own words that the line “soars as one walks and dips toward the back.”
Nearby, an Azzedine Alaïa strapless dress from his Spring–Summer 2006 ready-to-wear collection offers a different take. Made of white cotton voile, the gown is fully ruched and printed with a tone-on-tone raised Paisley motif, finished with a delicate lace trim along the top of the bodice. Playing with the artifice of haute couture, Alaïa continually pays homage to it even as he reinvents it, revisiting the proportions of the 1950s underdress, traditionally hidden beneath the gown to create volume. Here, the logic is reversed: the interior becomes exterior. Ruching is no longer merely structural but aesthetic, and the once-invisible underskirt becomes the façade. In this mirrored gesture, the dress becomes the undergarment, and the undergarment becomes the dress.
The exhibition’s scenography is rich with information, enticing visitors to spend more time observing the techniques and inspirations behind each piece. It creates a space visitors don’t rush through. They linger, engaging with Alaïa’s life and work with surprising intimacy, as if reading a story they feel personally invested in.
Dior’s dresses, with their gravity-defying structures, are positioned in juxtaposition with Alaïa’s sculpture-like dresses and overcoats. Dior’s garments fascinated him. They “stood up on their own,” Alaïa once said. Cutting and sewing became his lifelong obsession.
That obsession quietly threads through the exhibition. The accentuated waists. The sculpted shoulders. The curved hips. The restrained yet powerful palette of blacks and greys and greens, and reds. Alaïa never copied Dior. He studied him, absorbed him, and translated that early awe into a language that was entirely his own, in a way only he could. Decades apart, the garments seem to recognise each other.
What gives the exhibition its emotional weight is the knowledge that Alaïa was not only a couturier but also a guardian of fashion history. Over the course of his life, he collected more than 500 Christian Dior designs, preserving them with almost archival devotion. The pieces shown in this exhibition come from that personal collection. These were garments he lived with, learned from, and protected as part of the patrimoine de la mode.
Upstairs, the exhibition becomes even more intimate. Being able to see Alaïa’s former studio space, visitors understand the passion he had for his work. The distance between creator and creation collapses. The scene was left exactly as it was in 2017 at the time of his passing; it almost feels like he’ll come back any second. A video installation closes the visit, grounding the garments in the philosophy of the man himself.
“It’s a matter of complicity between a woman and a couturier,” says Alaa in an interview. “I make sure she keeps her personality.”
One truth clearly emerges: Alaïa loved women. Not as an abstract muse, but as bodies in motion and as living sculptures. His clothes listen before they speak.
This exhibition is powerful. It is about continuity and how admiration and precision become craft, how couture history is often written through devotion to skill. At a time when fashion feels increasingly loud and explanatory, “Azzedine Alaïa and Christian Dior” offers a look into fashion that is refreshing and increasingly rare.