Azzedine Alaïa presents, from September 2nd to 25th, the exhibition “Claude Parent: dessiner la mode”.

It is an unknown fact that the legendary architect (1923-2016), the theoretician and practitioner of the “oblique function”, a source of inspiration for generations of architects, artists and thinkers, did his national service with André Courrèges and began his career as a fashion illustrator.

Concerned for all his lifetime with elegance, with the way he existed and presented himself in public, as well as with the most profound stakes of living together, he reconnected with his first interests in the course of his friendship with Azzedine Alaïa. The couturier devoted an exhibition, in January- February 2016, to the dialogue the architect had with his younger peer, Jean Nouvel, based on their unrealised museum projects – the last exhibition Claude Parent was to see. He died on February 27th, the day before its closing.

From the summer of 2015 to February 2016, he had worked on a series of fashion drawings inspired from Azzedine Alaïa’s designs: these ink drawings, reworked with his grandson Laszlo Parent, crossed with a silver line marking the oblique dynamic of the clothing, represent fascinating attempts at understanding an art he considered close to his own – an art of life.

The totality of these drawings will be exhibited: they include the original inks, further re-elaborations, sketches on tracing paper; and the very last pieces, unfinished, to which the silver line is missing, dating from a few days before his death. They make this the architect’s last project.