Before the Paris collections ended, I stopped by Azzedine Alaia’s place to see what he was preparing for fall. I found him upstairs in the studio, which consists of many racks of samples and dress patterns, stacks of shoe boxes, ironing boards and, at the far end, near a huge mirror, his ample work table. Alaia offered me a chair next to the table. A number of writers had trooped by over the weekend and we probably all had the same thought: Gee, what a fantastic way to look at clothes.
Alaia had made a runway out of a path between some dress racks. The first thing he showed me was a violet-gray wool coat that was snug through the waist and then opened to a skirt of tubular-like pleats. Each pleat was formed by an arch of stitches at the top. It’s intriguing that a number of designers have shown rounded shapes—Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs (the ribbing and necklines at Vuitton), the fellows at 6267, with their fluted leather collars. Alaia’s coat suggested to me Moorish architecture. A knit jacket in pinkish beige wool had a high rolled collar and dolman sleeves; the flaring skirt was ribbed and ruched in places. The outfit was all a knit, as were sleeveless tops and matching skirts that combined sheerness and curly bands of wool.
What Alaia is able to do with knitting is remarkable. He produces ruffles and poodle curls that look like lace. The skirt of one outfit, in a boiled black knit, consisted of vertical rows of overlapping circles, like sugar cookies arranged on a buffet tray. And all of these effects are a technical extension of recent work, like the pleated caterpillar dresses worn at last year’s Costume Institute party by Stephanie Seymour and Naomi Campbell, and the new crinkled cotton shirt dresses for spring that use embroidery anglaise.