So Azzedine Alaia is finally getting his due...once again...with the lovely Sofia Coppola wearing one of his lovely little dresses in her wedding to Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars. As an aside, I did interview Thomas years ago for Oyster and he was one of the most amazingly nice people I've ever interviewed...and I've interviewed hundreds of superstars. I think he was with Sofia then and I was dying to tell him that they made a great couple but thought it would be a strange thing to say. I was also supposed to interview Bill Murray for Tokion, which was an extremely difficult star to track down (which I know everyone has read/heard about) and then Lost In Translation came out and my editor said, "There's no way we're going to get a hold of him now...". Funny stuff.
Back to Alaia. Alex from
Searching for Style did a post on him recently and I wrote something to her and she said the first time she had ever heard about Alaia was from Cher's quote in
"Clueless" (probably Alex's favorite film, btw...she loves that film so much). And I told her that I remember going through Vogue when I was a wee little thing and seeing all the gorgeous amazing spreads with the leopard/cheetah prints and the biker gang shoots with all the famous super models wearing Alaia (shot by Meisel, of course). I was pretty shocked that she hadn't seen these. I also told her how I used to go to Melrose (in LA) when it was something unique...a planet of shops unto itself....and more specifically a boutique called
GALLAY that carried all those iconic Alaia pieces. I would walk through and touch every single piece from the tight black laced-up dresses to the butterfly bustiers. And then years and years later (around 2000) I tried to snap some of those pieces up on EBay....they went for pennies then. But they used to get bought up pretty quick and my suspicion was always that Stephanie Seymour had a troop of bidders making sure she could add those pieces to her Alaia collection.
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| one of my tween birthday outfits was a copy of this. |
I looked online but did not find hardly any of those old shoots. I know my mom must have some of those old Vogues in her closet and I'll go through them and see if I can find any of these old editorials. The one pic I did see repeatedly online made me laugh. It's the one above with the girls in leopard prints and berets...because when I was a teen, my mom took me downtown to Michael Levine where we found a stretch leopard print fabric (that I think was also a little furry...can't remember....will have to look and see if I can find that dress and/or pics of a tween me-tween means before teen-wearing this fabric)....She made me a dress that sort of looked like the Alaia dresses...and I wore it with a beret and make up my older uncles did for me and we went out to some clubs with my fake ID. So seeing this pic...which I had completely forgotten about....I realized this is what I must have shown my mother and said....THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO WEAR FOR MY BIRTHDAY! :)
But I'll find some of those old Vogues. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. You will be an Alaia addict like so many of us were. And you'll see how Alaia ruled the school for so long in the 80s and also the 90s. AND bravo to Sofia for dressing like a rockstar for her wedding because she is a rockstar and marrying one, too...That's the way I'd like to do it. In a short dress. Nothing long and big and bouncy and flouncy. ICK.♡
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