As Fashion Month got underway, Olivier Saillard sat at his double-wide desk upstairs at the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation surveying mountains of files containing magazine clippings, runway photos, and show notes unearthed alongside the more than 300 pieces by Thierry Mugler in the late couturier’s fabled hoard.
Among them was a program—in triplicate—for Thierry Mugler’s “Futures Spirales” Winter 1979-1980 fashion show. On page three appears the first public acknowledgement of Alaïa’s contribution to a collection. Famously, in the mid-1960s, it was Alaïa who assembled the prototype of the Mondrian dress for Yves Saint Laurent, just one of his many moonlighting gigs in the studios of famous designers of the day. For Mugler, Alaïa had worked on sculptural smokings. “Without him, they would never have been so beautiful,” Mugler wrote. The only hitch: the credit read “Asdin Allaia.”
“I need to find a way to include that,” Saillard mused. And so it was that the program made its way into a frame onto the wall for the opening of “Azzedine Alaïa-Thierry Mugler 1980-1990: Two Decades of Artistic Affinities,” which opened tonight at the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa in the Marais.
“More than 40 years later, I’m still embarrassed,” admitted the retired fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart, Mugler’s PR at the time, who traveled to Paris from his home in the South of France for the preview.
More importantly, that relic speaks to a friendship that spanned decades, although it was spliced by a protracted feud. The affront dates to the first and only French fashion Oscars, in 1985, when the Fédération Française de la Couture (as it was then known) awarded Alaïa two trophies, the special jury prize and the designer of the year prize. In his acceptance speech, Alaïa, never one for public appearances, forgot to thank Mugler, without whose encouragement he might never have broken out. Aggrieved, Mugler left in a huff with his entourage of muses. For the next three decades, the two no longer spoke.
“Azzedine Alaïa-Thierry Mugler 1980-1990: Two Decades of Artistic Affinities” aims to right the narrative, showcasing unexpected similarities and a creative alliance between two couturiers seemingly from opposite ends of the fashion spectrum.
“This is a story of contrasts,” noted Saillard. “Alaïa was reserved and press shy, Mugler theatrical and media-savvy. Thierry had the panache, Azzedine had the sense of detail. But when you put their work side by side, you see the connection. It’s the same iconography of a woman.”
Younger by more than a decade, Mugler the showman achieved fame earlier, while Alaïa the quiet perfectionist continued catering to private clients, far from the runway, until Mugler forced his hand.
“Thierry believed in his talent. He told Azzedine he had to go public, that his work was too important to stay in the shadows,” Saillard recounts. When Bergdorf Goodman reached out, Alaïa hung up, thinking the call was a prank. It took multiple tries and a telegram for him to understand it was real. In New York, Mugler orchestrated Alaïa’s debut show and stood in as his official spokesman for journalists, launching a career that ultimately would eclipse his own.
Despite antithetical personalities, a creative dialogue is evident in the clothes. “There’s precision, sharpness of line, an obsession with structure, it’s all there,” said Saillard. “When I look at some of these pieces, even I have to double check. Sometimes I have trouble telling them apart.”
Anyone expecting the phantasmagoria of the Mugler retrospective at the MAD in 2021 is in for a surprise. “Alaïa did not collect that kind of dress, he collected things from life,” offered Saillard. “That will give visitors a chance to look at Mugler in a different light, as a maker of real clothes.”
Looks include an evening dress from Mugler’s Les Avaiateuses collection of autumn-winter 1987 in black panné velvet with a pink satin cowl neckline that dips deep on the back and cradles a bouquet of pastel-colored silk flowers. Around the room, clusters of suits, smokings, ensembles in denim or leather, and architectural evening dresses challenge the viewer to guess correctly which is by whom. Upstairs, groupings include glamorous numbers seemingly made of draped molten gold, as well as exotic-looking numbers like a camel suede lambskin dress trimmed with gold calfskin and eyelets (Mugler, 1980), and a dress in white topstitched canvas, cotton lace, eyelets and rope fringe (Alaïa, 1988).
“We found a quote from Mulger saying that Alaïa helped him integrate his fantastical clothes into real life,” said Saillard. “Conversely, Alaïa said he learned from Mugler how to make clothes that were more streamlined and sinuous, and he collected the suits, dresses and evening coats that woman could really wear.”
The friendship also came full circle just in time, said Carla Sozzani, who recalled running into Mugler while out to dinner with Alaïa at the fashionable restaurant Da Mimmo in 2016. “Nothing can ever be as before, but they were able to reconnect just in time,” she said. Mr. Alaïa passed away in November 2017; Mugler in January 2022.
“In the end, they were speaking the same language,” noted Saillard. “One just spoke louder than the other.”
