Cinema is the medium for the masses, not fashion, and certainly not high fashion. More people interface with the work of a director than a designer and yet, there are designers who find themselves at the centre of a small but influential section of the world.

This world that is guarded by the aesthete-police that tells you what to eat, what to wear, how to hold a glass and so on. The customs of the high and mighty have been made so redundant, why then, do we continue to worship their artists?

After the demise of Azzedine Alaia on November 18, the true impact of his influence tumbled across mainstream and social media. A man who had no patience for convention, who had upended the fashion timeline by saying, “the clothes will be ready when they are ready”, who chose to showcase the clothes at his workshop in Marais rather than the grand Palais de Tokyo. He was one of the few people who represented both the rebel and establishment in the fashion industry.

Alaia eschewed advertising and abhorred parallel designer perfume lines: the bread-and-butter of any big fashion label; and was therefore always the outsider looking in, content to work at his own rhythm. But in stature, achievement and, talent he was the establishment, a designer’s designer.

It’s actually a phenomena not very hard to understand. In every office you have two kind of people: those who get ahead because they know their work, and those who get ahead because they know the people. Alaia squarely falls into the first category. His clothes did not seek approval; even from authorities like the famous dominatrix editrix and fell out with many important people in the ‘industry’. Despite it, he had created a community around him of people working together, eating together and his house in Marais became a sanctuary for the young and upcoming fashionistas a la Gertrude Stein’s.

An Alaia was made on the body, not on the sketchbook. The King of Cling, as he was fondly dubbed, gave us form-fitting much before we had body-con. A feminist; women felt powerful in his clothes. He did not bother with trends, rather experimented with texture and stretch fabrics so that the final collection always looked like the clothes had been melted on to the body. They were not merely to be looked at or worn, they passed on the imbued glamour. One couldn’t slouch in an Alaia, you had a responsibility to the clothes. And the dress would keep its end of the bargain. He convinced us that every woman is the kind of woman that would make heads turn when she enters a room; some of us had just not worn an Alaia yet.

So how did this diminutive, unassuming, son of a Tunisian farmer make us feel his loss all over the world even though his direct sphere of influence did not stretch beyond the haloed chambers of the Syndicate de la Couture? We care about such people because these people become movements. Picasso upended the idea of traditional art, Rick Owens upended the idea of couture with his tailored punk attitude, Alexander McQueen changed the notion that nature in fashion was always to be soft with his armadillos, Banksy told us that graffiti could be personal, political and pretty.

In a manner all artists that impact us end up changing the idea of beauty (which can be considered our highest ideal but that is a different argument.) What we consider beautiful defines us, what Alaia considered beautiful defined his age. Every new generation creates its own mores, affections and alienations from the world, some vocalise it better than others. Not because they are the voice of the people (or other clichés) but because they are the people with a voice.

Shigorika Singh is a Bengaluru-based fashion journalist

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