Azzedine Alaïa was associated not only with a body-conscious look, but with a corner of Paris as well. The live/work space the designer built in the Marais, would become a welcoming mecca to models and clients, but it was unfinished when the designer presented his Fall 1989 show a month after the regular season ended. Alaïa famously presented on his own schedule, i.e. when he felt finished, and not according to a calendar date. According to The Los Angeles Times, the glass-roofed space was leaky, dampening the models as they paraded in a collection that underlined some of the tropes the designer had staked out as his own: sculpted leathers and clingy second-skin knits. The printed trenches were outliers; the pouf-sleeved knit dresses keepers. Best of all were the flowing bias-cut dresses in shimmering metallics with silver screen appeal.
