In the history of cinema there have been costume designers who created iconic looks that cemented the image of famous actresses. Think for example about Adrian who designed strong-shouldered silhouettes for Joan Crawford in The Women that became her signature style, or Judy Garland in her blue and white gingham dress and ruby red sequined shoes in Wizard of Oz, and Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, in a floor-length sleek white gown decorated with an Art Deco-inspired sequined motif.
Yet creating an iconic garment for the screen is the result of an almost mathematical equation, a perfect balance between knowing the story of the film and its historical context, understanding the characters you're dressing and coming up with looks that help an actor transforming into that particular character. Last but not least, you must have an extraordinary knowledge in tailoring.
Talented fashion designers do the same when they create their collections and visualize who their wearers may be and what kind of garments will make them look better. These were the rules followed by Hollywood costume designer Adrian (also known as Gilbert Adrian or Adrian Greenburg) and by the late fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa.
An exhibition currently on in Paris - "L'art du tailleur" (The Art of Tailoring; Association Azzedine Alaïa, 18, rue de la Verrerie, until 23rd June), curated by Olivier Saillard - celebrates them, juxtaposing their skills and talents and creating links between the two.
Adrian was born in 1903, in Naugatuck, Connecticut. In 1925, after training at the New York School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design), he was hired as a costume designer by Cecil B. DeMille. When the latter moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer three years later, Adrian went with him and became chief costume designer at MGM.
Adrian designed elegant, extravagant and opulent gowns and garments for over 200 films in his career: his gowns for Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow and Katharine Hepburn remain legendary, while his outfits for Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford had a great impact on women's fashion and were widely copied by the fashion industry. Adrian was known for turning actresses into goddesses and his designs were in such high demand that, when the costume designer established in 1942 his own couture design house, women responded very positively to his collections and the label became an immediate success thanks to his austere yet practical and timeless silhouettes.
Born in 1935, Alaïa studied at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Tunis and moved to Paris in 1957. He worked briefly at Christian Dior, then moved to Guy Laroche and to Thierry Mugler. He started his own atelier in 1979 in his Rue de Bellechasse apartment and came to the attention of celebrities, supermodels and the fashion media in the '80s thanks to his knitwear garments that molded to the body of the wearer, his experimental leather designs and sculpted pieces.
Adrian was mainly a costume designer who also created collections for the fashion industry; Azzedine Alaïa was instead a fashion designer who also made some costumes for films.
Like Adrian, Alaïa was favoured by actresses and celebrities, among them modern icons like Grace Jones, Madonna and Naomi Campbell, but the exhibition is not based on this rather obvious parallelism. The main point of the event is indeed focusing on body architectures via designs from Alaïa's own archive (he was a fan of Adrian and gathered over the years the most extensive collection of suits by the costume designer).
There are indeed other and more striking correspondences between the two: Adrian designed with a modern and strong woman in mind and launched iconic shapes characterised by an architectural sobriety such as his "triangle silhouette" (broad shoulders, slim hips and skirt 15 inches from the floor) that the costume designer loved as he considered it as the most flattering shape to a woman's figure. Azzedine Alaïa admired Adrian's technical prowess, couture details and attention to revolutionary shapes and based his career on architectural sobriety and perfect garment construction.
Sharply cut and sculpted, Alaïa's pieces mold to the body of the wearer and highlight it thanks to details such as zips that spiral around the body or geometrical structures. In a way this exhibition could be considered as a journey through form-fitting designs such as power suits and perfectly crafted jackets.
Quite a few of the pieces on display call to mind Adrian's designs for Crawford and the structured jackets supported by shoulder pads perfectly dialogue with Alaïa's empowering shapes.
There is also another connection between the two artists: in 1979 one of Alaïa's couture customer, baroness Cécile de Rotschild, brought a close friend to the designer's atelier - Greta Garbo.
The actress had worn the suits of Adrian in the '40s and, at the end of the '70s, she got a pair of Alaïa's trousers and an oversize navy cashmere overcoat (that the designer ended up buying back at an auction and that it is now part of the Alaïa collection).
Masters of cut and fit Adrian and Alaïa shared an obsession for the tailoring art (Alaïa would spend hours on a garment searching for a perfection that doesn’t almost exist anymore in fashion).
Visitors who will take their time to stop and think in front of each of the ensembles on display will discover that there's more than meets the eye behind each of them. There are some exquisite details to take in, from the buttons that punctuate Adrian's silhouettes or cinch at the waist Alaïa's jackets, to the suits impeccably crafted from engineered wool fabric with Adrian's signature decorative flaps often strategically placed to create a sense of dynamism and movement.
Adrian was passionate about art and always tried to incorporate Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism in his pieces; Alaïa collected art and also collaborated with artists (remember his 1985 collection that featured the "impression compression" textile print inspired by César's compression works?).
Last but not least, both Adrian and Azzedine Alaïa were pioneers: in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910-1969, author William J. Mann wrote about Adrian "You’re not designing what people want; you're designing what you want." Yet Adrian was so innovative that he turned what he wanted into what other people wanted, the author highlights.
The same could be said about Alaïa who preferred developing his own style rather than adapting to trends, worked according to his own rhythms and never lost his integrity even while working in the modern fashion industry, a place where the majority of designers do not lead but follow.
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