Alaïa Takes Over the Guggenheim for a New York City Spectacular, Channeling Its Past Unforgettable American Moments (2024)

Supermodels led by Kendall Jenner, a spiraling runway and the Guggenheim Museum hosting the first fashion show in its 85-year history —Pieter Mulier brought Alaïa back to New York City Friday night with a bang.

On models walking down the concrete ramps in the rotunda of the famed Frank Lloyd Wright building, Mulier offered his take on American sportswear twisted in the Alaïa way, using zero zippers or buttons —a design constraint he put on himself following his last spectacular collection using just one kind of merino thread.

“We looked a lot at the history of American fashion and what it used to be,” Mulier said during a pre-show interview with WWD. “I collect a lot of American designers, so we looked a lot at the American way of dressing. Everything is stretch or hangs on the body.”

That meant carefully sculpting gowns on curves, and crafting the miniskirts, bra tops and sexy dresses without fastenings that have found favor with next-gen stars Jenner, Kaia Gerber and others.

“It was very interesting for us because we are normally a brand that’s very zipped up, very buttoned up and all about the waists. It was not an easy thing but the body was still respected in the way we designed the collection,” he said.

New York Homecoming

Friday night’s show was a homecoming for the creative director, who lived in New York City for three-and-a-half years when he was number two to fellow Belgian Raf Simons at Calvin Klein.

“I was the most happy here,” he said —a surprising statement since he’s said before the experience of working for the American brand, where at times he felt like he was pumping out product, left him so drained creatively that he considered leaving fashion altogether.

“Most happy in my personal life,” he clarified, adding that it’s his first time returning to the city since — not that he had time to enjoy it pre-show, with back-to-back fittings.

Mulier has been leading the Paris fashion house, controlled by Compagnie Financière Richemont, since 2007,for three years, and has often shown off-calendar, closer to haute couture fashion week. His decision to present the Alaïa brand’s winter/spring 2025 collection in New York was a nod to the role the city played historically in the luxury brand’s rise, a chance to build on the commercial momentum it’s currently experiencing, and celebrate the exposure it’s had from American celebrities.

“The link between America and Alaïa has always been so strong…Americans have been the first clients of Alaïa since the beginning,” Mulier said.

Working as a couturier in Paris starting in the 1960s, the Tunisian born Azzedine Alaïa didn’t launch ready-to-wear until 1980, and it was America that put that business on the international map, as the designer drove the decade’s trend for all things stretchy and black.

Dawn Mello, then fashion director and president of Bergdorf Goodman, invited Alaïa to show a ready-to-wear collection at the store, after admiring the designer’s clothing on chic Paris women in Bill Cunningham’s style photographs published in WWD. Andy Warhol and Paloma Picasso were among the attendees at the September 1982 show, which WWD photographed front and back, and by the end of the day, Alaïa had enough orders to expand the business.

“He’s humble, shy and very sweet, and the ultimate perfectionist. He personally presses the clothes because he knows there’s a certain magic to it, and he climbed into the windows to help with the displays,” Mello told WWD at that event in 1982, adding that $50,000 of the body-conscious clothes sold out in two days.

A Theatrical Spectacular

Alaïa returned to New York again in 1985, this time mounting a theatrical spectacular of three years of his work at the Palladium nightclub, then owned by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager hot on the heels of their success with Studio 54. The evening’s dress code was all-black, the set was designed by Jean-Paul Goude and specially commissioned music was by the rock band Yello. The show’s $300,000 cost was shared by the designer and the club, with support from Barneys New York, according to a recap in The New York Times. Among the 1,186 glittery attendees were Warhol, Keith Haring, Dianne Brill, Stephen Sprouse, Giorgio Sant’Angelo, Pauline Trigere, Joan Rivers and Michael and Tina Chow.

The hourlong show featured all the top supermodels of the time, including Cindy Crawford, Yasmin Le Bon and Iman, walking the raised runway with theatrical flair. (It’s on Youtube and it’s fabulous.)

“I’ve watched it over and over,” Mulier said. “I watched it right before I signed with Alaïa. It was so incredible and so dramatic…shows like that didn’t exist then in America. Halston was showing in his showroom. So it actually was a big moment for America.”

That Mulier was able to have the first show at the Guggenheim was kismet. His fall 2024 collection featured two Spiral Dresses, or “La Robe Spirale,” that echo the shape of the famous New York landmark. Zendaya wore one for a “Dune Part Two” press call in Paris in February.

The piece was created with 3D-printed wool fabric designed to mold to the wearer’s body. “The Guggenheim contacted me right after the show to say they were amazing,” Mulier said. “And when we decided to go to New York, we contacted them and said it would be perfect to show there.”

The museum obliged, and artist Jenny Holzer, whose exhibition “Light Line” illuminates the walls of the museum until Sept. 29, agreed to dim her works for the show. “We both decided, the artist and the company, that it doesn’t make sense to show in front of an artwork because fashion for me is not art, and art should not be in a commercial context,” the designer said.

Though the show was intimate in size, just 250 guests, there was a special section on the first floor for 100 students. “It’s something very democratic that I think is also very New York,” Mulier said of the collaboration with the Pratt Institute, FIT and Parsons School of Design.

Mulier wanted to pay homage to the brand’s past in the U.S. as well as pay it forward. “The Americans never left the name behind,” he said, adding that the U.S. market is currently the biggest for brand sales. Building on the creative director’s well-received collections, and accessories like the hit mesh and studded mary jane flats, the brand is embarking on a retail expansion plan.

Following Alaïa’s return to New York retail for the first time since 1991, with an art-filled store on Mercer Street in SoHo opened last year, Alaïa will add boutiques in Beverly Hills, Las Vegas and Miami.

“This show was about to injecting a positive impulse into the positive environment,” he said.

As for rumors he may be leaving Alaïa for another creative director role, Mulier said he is staying put for now: “I’m very happy.” So not going to Chanel? “No…,” he paused. “Not yet.”