Two masters of haute couture are presented in an exceptional double exhibition.
Azzedine Alaïa started building a major archive of fashion early in his career, keeping it mostly to himself. He collected work from many of the most important designers in history, including Christian Dior, whose influence meant a lot to him. This new double exhibition looks at the history of Maison Dior through Alaïa’s eyes — not as a historian, but as someone who deeply appreciated the craft. It also presents a set of personal exchanges between Dior and Alaïa that show how much respect existed between them.
The collection currently held by the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation includes roughly 600 pieces, and Dior’s work forms one of the core pillars of Alaïa’s archive. More than a hundred of these Dior designs are being shown publicly for the first time at La Galerie Dior. Seen together, they highlight how strongly Alaïa connected with Dior’s work and with the designers who came after him at the Maison Dior, including Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano.
At the same time, the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation is hosting its own exhibition in Paris, bringing together work by both Dior and Alaïa. The show is curated by Olivier Saillard with Gaël Mamine. It focuses on how these two designers, despite working in different eras and with their own sensibilities, shared a similar curiosity about how clothing is built and how form can shape style.
Alaïa was always trying to understand how certain dresses held their shape or why specific structures worked the way they did. Saillard notes that Alaïa collected these pieces not out of nostalgia but out of a genuine desire to learn from them. For Alaïa, these garments represented the ideas and questions that first inspired him as a young designer and served as the guiding principle throughout his life.
