Dress
Azzedine Alaïa never followed fashion, but stated "It's women who have dictated my direction, I have followed the education of their silhouette." He worked the two-dimensional textile into a sculptural three-dimensional garment like a sculptor works with stone. Inspired by the work of Madeleine Vionnet, whose work he collected, he engineered bias-cut dresses in jersey fabrics using synthetic fibers that cling to the body, resulting in his nickname "The King of Cling." The sensual silhouette of this dress echoes the elegant draped silhouettes of Alaïa's youth in Tunis, and testifies of his eternal quest and research into the "academy of the female body," as he called it.
Artwork Details
- Title: Dress
- Designer: Azzedine Alaïa (French (born Tunisia), Tunis 1935–2017 Paris)
- Date: ca. 1998
- Culture: French
- Medium: acetate, metal
- Credit Line: Millia Davenport and Zipporah Fleisher Fund, 2020
- Object Number: 2020.132
- Curatorial Department: The Costume Institute
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