all about alaia..

Go make a cup of tea. Sit down and get ready for a treat

The stylist Joe McKenna has just released on joes film his documentary on Azzedine Alaia. Filmed over the past several years,whenever McKenna had breaks from work, it’s a wonderfully intimate portrait of Alaia and his method of working–thanks to McKenna’s long friendship with the designer, he had rare access to the studio and workrooms. Watching Alaia as he does fittings with his house model and makes his own patterns, you get a better sense of why he’s a class apart in the fashion industry.

As they discuss in the film, Alaia is man who very much marches to the beat of his own drum. A man who can take five years to develop a skirt, working to his own timescales and refusing to fit into the gruelling system of two shows a year.

 The fact that the black-and-white film is so simple and true (and not overly polished) is what makes it charming, a time capsule. There are interviews with Nicolas Ghesquiere, Carlyne Cerf, Naomi Campbell and Grace Coddington, among others; and McKenna unearthed amazing clips of Alaia’s early shows. It’s quite a story of commitment to the same ideals over five decades.

At it's heart this is a film about family. The family he has built for himself and that is what makes him so beloved. 

Queen Marie