PARIS • The exhibition Azzedine Alaia: Je Suis Couturier opened on Jan 21 in the Alaia showroom at 18 rue de la Verrerie, the site of the late designer's last couture show, giving him a living presence during Haute Couture week in Paris.
It took the place of a more formal, fashion-centric memorial and is free to the public until June 10.
It is also the first salvo in a coordinated effort by Alaia's partners to keep his brand alive and functioning in his image and on his terms, if without his physical presence.
A precollection - what Alaia called the "Intemporels" - which he designed before his death, will be sold to buyers this month, and the main collection of autumn ready-to-wear and accessories in March.
Afterwards, there are enough products, samples and ideas in the archives, said Ms Carla Sozzani, owner of the 10 Corso Como boutique and one of Alaia's closest collaborators, for the studio he left behind to create new seasonal collections "for generations". "I think this is what he would have wanted," she said.
Despite the fact that Alaia was 82, he had not exactly strategised for the future and there had never really been any discussions of formal succession.
"He thought he was eternal," Ms Sozzani said. But while not focused on the mechanics of the house, he was "very concerned with legacy".
To that end, he and his partner, painter Christoph von Weyhe, created the Azzedine Alaia Association in 2007, a non-profit organisation that will be administered by Ms Sozzani, Mr Olivier Saillard (former director of the Palais Galliera, one of Paris's two fashion museums), and von Weyhe. That took place at the same time that a majority stake in the company was being sold to Richemont.
"We were reorganising his life and he wanted to protect his work and archives," Ms Sozzani said. According to von Weyhe, Alaia set aside enough money to endow the association, which is in the process of applying for more formal foundation status.
Alaia had been saving his own work since the 1980s and he has been collecting the work of designers he admired for even longer, including pieces from Charles James, Paul Poiret, Vionnet, Chanel, Madame Gres and many others. Neither Sozzani nor Mr Saillard could venture a guess as to how many pieces there were, but together they occupied five floors and approximately 14,760 sq ft in Alaia's compound on rue de la Verrerie. To create more room there, a portion of the archive is being moved to a building near rue de la Republique, which has an additional 9,840 sq ft.
"I never saw such archives in my life," said Mr Saillard, who is effectively the association's curator. "He has the most important private collection devoted to the history of fashion. For 20 years I used to see him at auction and we curators were all very jealous because he always bought the masterpiece we wanted and he always refused to show them."
And it was not just clothes. Alaia collected furniture from designers including Pierre Paulin, Jean Prouve, Shiro Kuramata and Marc Newson, as well as books. It is the clothes, however, and the patterns, fabrics, buttons and sketches - the record of his creative process - that will form the basis of the continuing life of the house.
"He kept everything," Ms Sozzani said.
NYTIMES
