September 11 2025 -> November 16 2025

Fondation Azzedine Alaïa
T : +33 (0)1 87 44 87 75
Rue de la Verrerie
75004 Paris
France

Contact
fondationazzedinealaia@2e-bureau.com
www.fondationazzedinealaia.org

Presented on 23 January 2003, the couture collection for the Summer-Autumn of the same year embodied Azzedine Alaïa’s creative and stylistic renewal. The couturier had not presented a fashion show for eleven years. Having distanced himself from the fashion system he prophetically contradicted, no longer recognising himself in an era that celebrated minimalist fashions, Azzedine Alaïa stuck to reworking iconic designs season after season, whose technical perfection and craftsmanship confirmed them as classics that became his signature.

In 2003, when his fashion house was going through a period of financial vulnerability and the architectural heritage of his lifetime’s work on Rue de la Verrerie and Rue de Moussy was sometimes putting its economic stability at risk, Azzedine Alaïa found new financial backers. Accompanied by his loyal friend and collaborator Carla Sozzani, he isolated himself for weeks in the silence of his studio and began to design a collection that would once again place him at the top of the fashion world.

Azzedine Alaïa’s work spans four distinct periods. The first, from his arrival in Paris in 1956 to his first fashion show under his own name in 1982, was characterised by a long apprenticeship during which the couturier worked with a private clientele. The second period, from 1982 to 1992, was one of triumph. Azzedine Alaïa presented his first fashion show at Bergdorf Goodman, encouraged by his friend Thierry Mugler. This was followed by a succession of major collections in which Azzedine Alaïa revealed himself as a couturier who magnified the body. In 1985, he won two Fashion Oscars, including one for the greatest designer of the moment. The 1980s belonged to him. Until 1992, each season saw the introduction of the central themes of his work: zip dresses, bandage dresses, shirts, and jackets governed solely by the architecture of the volumes, etc. The years 1992 to 2002 were a period of analysis and reflection. Azzedine Alaïa broke away from a fashion system he found alienating.

In 2003, at the age of almost 68, the couturier was about to embark on the final period of his career, which would showcase the excellence of his work in all its glory. Azzedine Alaïa no longer had to prove his technical superiority over his contemporaries. His research, motivated by the quest for the ultimate cut, became quieter and more abstract, even more skilful because it was less visible on the surface. From this perspective, all the designs he was preparing to show in his Summer-Autumn 2003 collection, marking his return, were manifestos of the technical virtuosity that only he could master. Seemingly effortless, the jackets, coats, and dresses were the culmination of a lifetime spent in the atelier. A new femininity, more serene, emerges from the radiant silhouettes. The applause continues throughout the day. True to himself, Alaïa does not come out to greet his audience, as if to further highlight the clothes to which he, as a couturier and collector, has devoted his entire life and passion.