When Olivier Theyskens was first appointed the creative director of Azzaro a year ago he went to visit the house’s deserted atelier above shop on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, where the late Loris Azzaro dressed the international It Girls of the 1970s disco era in his signature sensual dresses. Theyskens recalls how powerful the energy was in the space: He immediately began to sit down and sketch his own daring body-con vision for Azzaro with its power shoulders and skirts slashed to the waist—a 180 degree pivot from the prim and poetic romanticism that defined his own designs at the beginning of his career.
Theyskens soon discovered that some of the atelier’s mirrored wall panels swung open to reveal Azzaro’s extensive media archives and this season he immersed himself in more of the house’s history when he explored the collection of original Azzaro pieces in Paris’s dedicated fashion museum, the Palais Galliera, including many dresses designed for the legendary singer Dalida. (Loris Azzaro also famously dressed Marisa Berenson, Jane Birkin, and Brigitte Bardot, among others). Looking at these clothes Theyskens was struck by the designer’s sleek vision. “It’s not baroque, it’s not Versailles,” Theyskens explained, “and you don’t need an assistant to dress up. There was always a form of simplicity—effortless, impactful, and minimal.”
Taking these precepts as his North Star—and delving further into the Azzaro glory years with a look at the era’s modernist furniture designs and on the fabled Studio 54 interiors created by Scott Bromley—Theyskens presented a collection of men’s and women’s wear that merged his Goth Belgian sensibility with some old school va-va-voom, to intriguing effect.
Theyskens clearly feels that after a year in lockdown the Azzaro customer just wants to party: The show opened with a smoking suit dazzled with silver sequins like a disco ball. There are liquid platinum suits for guys, and slithers of dresses and jumpsuits for girls with what he playfully described as, “décolleté, the most glamorous possible—almost to the limit!”
Even the knitwear is fashioned to caress the body. Theyskens also researched the exact fine chain that Azzaro used for Tina Turner’s show dresses, and incorporated it into the scintillating embroideries he works on with Indian artisans. Those craftspeople were also responsible for Theyskens’s impasto take on the triple-linked ring motif that is an iconic Azzaro signature and that he uses on the back or side of jackets and dresses. He also looked at contemporary fabrics that he feels that Azzaro would have been drawn to if he were here to admire them, such as microsequins worked on fine bark-textured pleats.
“This is the place where I can play with the sexy allure,” said Theyskens, “there is no limit.”
