The historic Azzedine Alaïa boutique at 7 Rue de Moussy in Paris was special: Initially, it had no window display, customers had to buzz to gain entry, and the Tunisian-born couturier could sometimes be spotted near the vast fitting rooms, giving advice to important clients.
If you were lucky enough to be invited to lunch with him, you would enter through the store and wait there for him to tear himself away from draping, cutting and fitting.
Now, after more than 35 years, and nearly 10 years after the founder’s death, the store is going dark, effective Sunday.
This fall, it will become a museum and cultural space as part of the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation, which is located in the same complex of buildings where the designer occasionally held fashion shows.
Alaïa confirmed the transformation of the space, which is interconnected with the foundation, located at 18 Rue de la Verrerie in the Marais district. One of its permanent elements, visible through a large window, is his studio, preserved as he left it, with the last dress he was working visible on a tailor’s dummy.
The studio, as he left it, at the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation.
Sylvie Delpech/Courtesy of Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
The foundation hosts rotating fashion and photography exhibitions with the next one, “Azzedine Alaïa and Africa,” slated to open to the public on Tuesday during Paris Couture Week.
The founder lived and worked under the same roof, his complex uniting his ateliers and studios, private apartments and a kitchen, where he loved to entertain, plus the boutique, which has operated since 1991.
In fall 2004, he also opened a three-room hotel at 5 Rue de Moussy, overseeing every detail of it from lamps to furniture.
In 2006, he added an accessories space as an annex to his historic flagship, which boasted exposed brick, wood floors and giant paintings by his friend Julian Schnabel. His industrial design friend Marc Newson created a luxurious, vaguely futuristic counterpoint for the accessories corner in white Carrara marble and flesh-colored leather.
Inside the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation.
Sylvie Delpech/Courtesy of Azzedine Alaïa Foundation
Founded in Paris in 1983, Alaïa is now owned by luxury group Compagnie Financière Richemont SA, parent of Cartier, Chloé, Dunhill and other brands.
In recent years it has expanded its retail footprint worldwide — including in Paris, last year opening its largest store in the world catty-corner to the iconic Hermès flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré.
The brand has operated a three-story boutique housed in an 18th-century mansion at 5 Rue de Marignan since 2013. It also has corners in Paris at Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché.
