Just after 10 a.m. on a cold Sunday morning last January, I rang the doorbell at 7 rue de Moussy in the heart of the Marais in Paris. A middle-aged woman dressed in a long black coat opened the gates. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. I told her I was there for a photo shoot. She made a call from a desk with a cash register.

    I stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling painting by Julian Schnabel hung next to a glass elevator in the middle of a large open loft. To the left sat a tall rolling garment rack with short dresses ranging from pale pinks to bright whites, and to the right were two racks with black leather jackets, trench coats, and cropped wool jackets. Two more Schnabels anchored the far opposite ends of the loft. A young girl wearing a short pale pink stretch dress with diamond holes around the hemlines emerged from the back and asked if I would follow her. “I’m Fajer,” she said.  
    We walked through a corridor, passing a room where a group of eight girls in bathrobes sat ready to model, crossed a courtyard connecting the two buildings, entered the second building, and walked up two flights of stairs to the second floor of the 3Rooms, a private hotel. Inside the room off the stairway, a brown mink coat lay on a long leather sofa that occupied the entire length of the room. Near the windows sat Stephanie Seymour, getting her hair sprayed, checking in the mirror for how the hair fell back on her shoulder. “Thank you so much for making the trip,” I said, as I gave Ms. Seymour a hug. “Of course! I’d do anything for Papa,” she responded warmly.  
    “Papa” is of course Azzedine Alaïa. That’s what Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista call him too. Last May, they acted in unison by refusing to attend the dinner for “Model as Muse,” a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, because Mr. Alaïa’s work was not represented—a curatorial negligence considering how Alaïa and the supermodels are such a tight-knit family.
    Born in Tunis to a wheat-farming family, Azzedine Alaïa attended the local École des Beaux-Arts, where he briefly studied sculpture. While working part-time as a garment finisher and making copies of French dresses for local rich women, a close friend referred him for a job sewing labels at Christian Dior in Paris. He packed his things, absconded to Paris, and set to work at Dior for a grand total of five days. Then he was promptly fired.  
    Mr. Alaïa survived the repressive atmosphere in Paris at the end of the French-Algerian War with the personal help of the women he had met while living in the maid’s room at the Comtesse de Blégiers’ apartment. He spent two years at Guy Laroche, attentively learning tailoring techniques, and then he started to build a substantial client list of his own, women from the pinnacle of Paris’ high society like Louise de Vilmorin and Cécile de Rothschild. Inside his small apartment on rue de Bellechasse, where life and work always mixed, he occasionally organized small impromptu fashion shows.
    Dinner at chez Azzedine became the chicest meeting place in Paris for artists like Grace Jones, Andrée Putman, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Paul Goude, Tina Turner, and Duran Duran. Many prominent supermodels stayed with him when they came to Paris. He had the friends in high places; he just needed to show the world his work. In 1981, Mr. Alaïa showed a small spring-summer collection.
    Contrary to the power-dressing trend of the era, Mr. Alaïa’s skin-tight silhouettes and body-fitted clothes—made with his revolutionary stretch rayon and silk fabrics—glued to the body like a second skin. No one had seen anything like it before and the collection quickly gained traction at places like Barneys in New York. The black bandage dress worn by Linda Evangelista in a mid-1980s show at his studio defined the Alaïa look and influenced fashion for over a decade. It was Alaïa who originally married sex with fashion, not Gianni Versace.
    Mr. Alaïa’s influence in shaping modern fashion is so ubiquitous, yet often invisible—it’s like we can’t see the air we breathe. An Alaïa signature curvy jacket or long flared coat in wool or shiny leather is instantly recognizable. They’re short and cropped to just above the hips, button or zip front with waves that flare around the waist in a princess-line, and a shapely and flowing broad shoulder with detailed piping that tapers into tight sleeves. An Alaïa stretch dress curves around the breasts, wraps the hips, and flares at the legs. Then and now, this dedication to the female form remains his design philosophy so impervious to seasonal trends.
    Since 1992, when he stopped his sporadic fashion shows, Mr. Alaïa’s name has been rarely mentioned. He was virtually ignored by the fashion system, as he preferred to work independently, without licensing or investors. Fashion magazines seldom covered his designs. He delivered the clothes when they were ready, regardless of the season, and Barneys was forced to activate a non-cancellation policy for his orders. But in late 2000, he announced a partnership deal with Prada to grow his accessories and shoes company, and to preserve his archives. Six years later, business had greatly expanded, and he was able to repurchase the company, with continued collaboration of shoes and accessories for Prada.
    On the third floor of the main Alaïa complex–two buildings separated by a courtyard converted into a showroom–photographer Gilles Bensimon had transformed part of a new design space into a temporary photo studio. Mr. Alaïa was organizing clothes on a rack when we came in.  “Splendide,” he remarked to Ms. Seymour. As Mr. Alaïa finished tying the two bows in the back of the cotton print shirt. “Pudding,” the design assistant, zipped up the black perforated leather boots, I adjusted the front of the skirt, and Stephanie readied herself for the first shot.
    “Le Patron?” I asked Pudding after we finished shooting a long mustard stretch dress.
    “He went to get stuff,” she said.
    “Oh that means he went to get things to cook for dinner,” Caroline, the commercial director, elaborated. “I think he is at the fish market.” So, we had coffee and waited until the boss returned to go outside for the next look.
    About three in the afternoon, we all gathered in the spacious kitchen, nearly the size of the showroom, where Mr. Alaïa was sitting at the head of a long rectangular table, cutting several whole chickens with a long knife, telling funny stories. This time he told a story about his Japanese assistant, nicknamed “Moshi Moshi,” and his fear of ghosts. Later that night, after the shoot, I found Mr. Alaïa in the kitchen putting slices of lemons and tomatoes on the 2 kilos whole par fish he bought earlier at the market. He had also made spring rolls for an appetizer. “A table,” he said, commanding everyone to dinner.
    “There are women so devoted to his clothes over many years. One woman made a trip from Venice to the store every month. It’s [mainly] older customers, but there are a great deal of younger women who are discovering Alaïa,” Carla Sozzani, the owner of 10 Corso Como shop in Milan, said as the plate of fish and roasted potatoes arrived. “It’s a specific shape,” she emphasized over a glass of cut fresh fruits.
    “He’s someone that I know very deeply. You are very lucky. He never agrees to any interviews,” Ms. Sozzani said to me before putting on her black Alaïa coat as her taxi arrived.
    At about 12:30 a.m., Mr. Alaïa took me upstairs to his design studio. There were racks and racks of clothes, incomplete samples, swatches of fabrics, and an equal amount of paper patterns all on hangers. At a nearby table, he explained to me how each piece of the black leather and metal were glued together by hand to make the crochet cropped top and skirt that was shot earlier. In front of his large desk filled with paper patterns, colored pencils, and sketches, there was a very large flat screen television.  He was looking for the remote to turn it off. “I always watch TV when I work,” he said.
    I try to start the interview: “Tell me about your childhood in Tunisia and how you came into fashion?” I asked as we sat down on his large desk packed of paper patterns.
    “Attends,” he said. He found a large green limited edition monograph of his work published by Steidl in 1988. He shuffled four or five paper patterns cutouts that resembled parts of an unfinished sleeve, held them up, and said, “These I have to finish preparing for the atelier tomorrow so they can finish the mock up of the dress. Here’s my entire family in photographs.” He turned the pages to a collage spread then, pointing to a picture of a middle age woman dressed in black. “Her name is Mme. Pinot,” he said, “a French woman. She got me interested in fashion. She was a close friend of my family and a midwife who helped my mother give birth to my sister and me.”

And you were in school?
I was in primary school. Mme. Pinot helped me enter the École des Beaux-Arts—the minimum age was sixteen and I was only fifteen. She told them she was my mother and that I was of age. She cheated for me.
What did you study?
At school we had to study everything, but I concentrated on studying sculpture.
Why sculpture?
Because I like sculpture. But after a short time, I realized that it is a very difficult profession.
And how did you start to learn about fashion?
My sister was studying fashion at a boarding school. She didn’t like fashion, but I pushed her. A local dressmaker was looking for someone to help her with finishing garments. We would bring home these clothes, finish them at night, and I brought them back the next day. As I was doing this work, l learned practical skills at the same time. Along the street that I traveled every day to the Beaux-Arts, one girl from a bourgeois family, who knew that I was working with the local couturieres to help with my school expenses, called me from her balcony and introduced me to her cousin, the wife of a very important diplomat. Mme. Richards, a local dressmaker, made copies of Dior and Balmain dresses from magazines they bought in Paris for her cousin. I started to work there during my summer breaks. That’s how I started in fashion.
How did you move to Paris?
Women always played a major role in my life. There was one woman, Leila, who knew all the rich families in Tunis and she organized for me to make clothes for many of them—dresses, skirts, and daywear. Leila’s mother was great friends with a Tunisian client of Christian Dior in Paris and she asked her friend to ask if Dior would employ me. I was completely fascinated by Dior’s clothes and what he did in the 1950s.
And you moved then?
I arrived in Paris at the end of the Algerian War in 1957. It was very complicated and very difficult for people from North Africa; even to obtain a small boarding room was nearly impossible. After the five days, they told me I could not work anymore because I am a foreigner even though I had a Carte de Séjour. Leila found a maid chamber in her building and I started to make dresses for her and her friends like Mme. Simone Zehrfuss, the wife of the architect Bernhard Zehrfuss.
And the women whom you met always were protecting you?
I was very fortunate. Mme. Zehrfuss really took care of me. At her house, I met Louise de Vilmorin, a writer and a companion to André Malraux, who became my protégé so that the police would not bother me. She even phoned the préfet to get me the official papers.
You made clothes for them?
Yes, I made clothes for the women privately. I went to work for Guy Laroche for four seasons to learn couture and tailoring techniques at the atelier—how to cut, drape, and how to make a dress with traditional craftsmanship. In the late 1970s, I started out on my own, settling in a small apartment at rue de Bellechasse.  Some of the most important people in Paris—Cécile de Rothschild, Claudette Colbert, René Clair, and even Greta Garbo came to have their clothes made. It was a business based on word of mouth.
Everything under one roof?
Everything. I didn’t have enough money to rent an atelier and an apartment. In the early 1980s, it was easier for new designers to launch their businesses. You could be in a small apartment. You could do a small collection, even if it was not well done. There was excitement about ready-to-wear then, unlike now, and people were excited to see what was new. I still operate everything in one place today. Here is the office; across the courtyard is home.
What was fashion like then?
It was the end of the hippy era. The 1980s were about unisex and power dressing with very large clothes. But for me, I did a completely different silhouette—it was skinny and close to the body.
You’ve kept this silhouette until today?
Yes, because fashion for me is a concentration on and a study of the body. It was the influence of my study of sculpture. There are silhouettes I developed that I keep, but every time there is a new proportion, a new material, and I change the sleeves, the armholes. Even if you don’t perceive something different, it is not the same dress or jacket. It’s in the materials.
Where’s fashion now?
There’s a fatigue in fashion, I think. Designer fashion is different now.  Designers cannot create so many collections—cruise and pre-fall, accessories—when normally two-a-year is more than sufficient. A designer simply cannot invent something new every two months or so. It takes six months of research and work to build a new silhouette. I work until very late every morning since I do many things by myself. Personally, I know it’s not possible. That’s the reason why fashion today does not change very much. There is no time to think, to invent something new. You can no longer be excited or surprised. Rarely is there any freshness.
Why didn’t you look for a financial partner in the late 1980s?
I wanted to remain independent and have my freedom. If you accept investments, you are obligated to do what they need. I did this partnership with Prada in 2000, an agreement that was unique because I didn’t sell my name to them. They manufacture and distribute my shoes, and helped me build the archive, and open the shop here. I repurchased the company in 2006 and later entered into a similar partnership with Financière Richemont. You need the investment partnership because good fashion is very expensive. The materials are very expensive.
You only show when you have something new?
If you do a fashion show now, it really is not about selling clothes. It’s for image only. After I lost my sister, I said to myself that I will stop certain things. Women do not learn how to dress from fashion shows. I mean, there are fewer women who buy couture fashion and it takes time to make the clothes. There’s something out of balance here. I have very loyal clients, older ones and younger ones, and there is no time to see and look after them. There were periods of one or two months that I didn’t have time to leave this complex. I cross the courtyard to the studio in the morning and return very late at night.
Do you collect couture clothes?
Vionnet, Balenciaga, Paul Poiret, Schiaparelli, Comme des Garçons, Margiela, Junya Watanabe, and even young designers. I want to build a foundation and put my entire archive [in it] as well. I wanted to do some expositions eventually. It’s something for the young people to see how some of the great couturiers worked.
Are young people becoming designers too fast?
When young people get out of school, they already think of themselves as designers. This is not good. They have the school knowledge, but not the experience. The difficulty of fashion isn’t just about creativity. It’s about selling clothes, about having means to buy materials to make clothes.  Young designers cannot remain independent today. It’s impossible. But money can weaken creativity as well.
You work on every aspect of a garment?
Yes. I start with the base and make and correct the patterns. Like here’s an adjusted pattern for a sleeve with different color markings to show each adjustment. I give these to the studio and they will trace this on fabric and get the sample ready for fittings and further changes. There’s an atelier for tailoring and leather and two for fluid fabrics like chiffons.  We do all the prototypes here and for certain clients the clothes are done here. We work with a special leather factory near here that knows how we work the leathers. You also need skilled technicians to realize the prototypes. I have a young girl here who came from Yves Saint Laurent couture.  
You do one collection a year?
No, two. And I remake some of the classics. It’s funny how a twin set and a skirt can do an enormous amount of business. That also tells you what women really consume. The rest is only short term. Women have to have the time to buy clothes, because they are very expensive. There has to be time at the stores for consumers to buy—every month some things are on sale. We are not on sale in New York unless it’s something very old.
Would you do a collection for H&M?
If I have time, I would love to. I did with Tati before. I am overbooked at the moment. Right now, I have a lot of couture orders that we are working on, but there’s also the collection for buyers, and the winter collection as well. You have to cheat a little bit to catch up. It’s a lot of time spent for a single client.
And you have to remain free?
If I were not free, I would not do it.
But you have to have several palaces and yachts in the Mediterranean to be a successful designer today. (Both laugh.)
Listen, I have a house in Tunisia that I never live in or use. I am always here. I go to bed over there and come back down here tomorrow to work. Where are the needs for palaces and yachts? I mean, there is furniture delivered downstairs that are still in boxes.
Yes, I saw the boxes in the hallway near the kitchen being used as counters.
I spend time with friends. We lunch and dine every day together. It’s like a family where you drop by and stay for lunch. Usually fifteen to twenty people come to eat here everyday. And when dinner is over, I go back up to the studio and work until about three in the morning. I turn on the TV as I work. Sometimes I watch National Geographic. I mistakenly think I visited a place because I had seen it on TV. Once I was describing the minute details of the Bosphorus and the palaces to a friend who was leaving for Turkey as if I had been there. [It was just] on TV the night before.
But a boat in the Mediterranean?
What am I going to do with a boat? Fashion is not the same way as before where designers would shut themselves in their house and work on collections. Now so much is done outside due to lack of time. And couture is just evening and wedding clothes. Young rich women can find everything in ready-to-wear shops. Couture should continue so that the main d’oeuvres remain. You can no longer spend hours and hours on one thing anymore. Sometimes ready-to-wear techniques are better than couture so those skills have to change.
I think there’s less of the human experience of fashion.
Precisely.   

    Just past 2 a.m., we walked down the staircase, back into the store, now completely dark save for the lights emanating from upstairs, to the front gate. I wondered as I walked on the dark rue de Moussy what modern fashion would be like if other designers had followed Alaïa’s unique road. Is his model even feasible? In this age of globalization, the small artisan fashion designer house as a business model is surely an anomaly, but maybe not obsolete.   
    Mr. Alaïa’s absolute devotion to his craft is admirable and distinctive. I came to understand from Le Patron that fashion is not art; it’s not an intellectual endeavor ripe for endless analysis. Rather, fashion is an emotional response on how to contain a human body. That’s the Alaïa experience of contemporary fashion.