People

On the Record

Photography by Txema YesteEric Waroll interviews the great designer Azzedine Alaïa about his history in fashion and his relationships with Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour.

We know little of the history of this feud but American Vogue does not ever focus on the Tunisian-born designer, who wasn’t even included in Wintour’s ‘Model as Muse’ Metropolitan Museum exhibit in May 2009. Several top models including Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Stephanie Seymour and Naomi Campbell boycotted the event.

Azzedine Alaïa on Anna Wintour

I don’t need her support at all. Anna Wintour doesn’t deal with pictures; she is just doing PR and business, and she scares everybody. But when she sees me, she is the scared one. [Laughs.] Other people think like me, but don’t say it because they are afraid that Vogue won’t photograph them. Anyway, who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one.

Azzedine Alaïa on Karl Lagerfeld

I don’t like his fashion, his spirit, his attitude. It’s too much caricature. Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life. That doesn’t mean that he’s not great, but he’s part of another system. He has capacity. One day he does photography, the next he does advertisements for Coca-Cola. I would rather die than see my face in a car advertisement. We don’t do the same work. And I think that he is not doing a favor to young stylists who might think it works that way. They’re going to fall before they retire.

Karl Lagerfeld & Lady Gaga on French TV

Entrepreunership 101

Meet Lauren Conrad, Inc. Forbes

25-year old Lauren Conrad has joined Forbes as a lifestyle contributor for at least the next four months. Conrad is launching a specialty clothing line, Paper Crown.

‘Lauren’s jump from celebrity to entrepreneur puts her on the same trajectory as many a bright-eyed instant cover girl, but whether she can channel her persona into an enduring commercial tour de force remains to be seen,’ Forbes associate editor Jane Lee wrote in the announcement.

Design

Robotic Bartender with Heart

DareDroid 2.0 Cocktailmaking Dress Fashioningtech.com

Dutch fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht’s cocktail-making dress is a collaboration with hacker Marius Kintel and sculptor Jane Tingley that delivers a White Russian, as opposed to only tepid milk, based on your willingness to play a game of Truth or Dare, coupled with one’s natural charm.

The extraordinary impact of the performance is largely due to the the garment’s other-worldly design and styling. The white, sculptural fabric appears, at the same time, clinical as it does seamlessly manufactured. The styling avoids the obvious tropes of looking futuristic or robotic. Instead it alludes to a “manufactured organic” and envisions clothing as an exoskeleton (with a limited nervous system) that covers bare human flesh.

DareDroid

tip via NotCot

Una Burke Fall 2011 Meta.Morph Collection | Andreas Waldschutz & Steffan Sappert AOC Private Studio

It’s been a strange morning discovering Anouk Wipprecht’s cocktail dress right after learning about Una Burke’s magnificent wearable art project that attempts to fuse a positive healing connection between her pieces and human trauma.

Both designers are humanizing more masculine entities with female principles and emotion. This is a favorite topic of mine and one that I worry about, in terms of the development of robotics and artificial intelligence. Anne