Many years ago, in a land not so far away, two designers went head to head in a controversy over bandages.
The era was the ’80s. The land was Paris. The designers were Azzedine Alaïa and Hervé Léger. The bandages in question were in the form of dresses.
Léger worked for Alaïa (although this isn’t listed in the current bio on the Hervé website) and Alaïa claimed he copied his designs.
I will let you make up your own mind, but I distinctly recall the Tunisian designer, otherwise known as the “King of Cling”, being adored by the Supes.
I remember Naomi and Yasmin Le Bon in his stretch dresses – and I dreamed of adding one of those numbers to my own closet. I think I bought a clinging skirt in a mushroom tone, only because I saw Christy wearing that dress above. The skirt wasn’t an Alaïa (it would have taken a lot of student work hours to afford one at the time) – so it just wasn’t the same.
Well, Monsieur Léger, who created those bandage dresses under his own label in the ’80s to much success, lost control of his company and the right to use his name in the late ’90s. The Hervé Léger website says that the BCBG Max Azria Group bought it in1998 and Léger, who now runs a successful design business under Hervé L. Leroux says it was 1999, according to his own website.
The Leroux label specializes in bandage dresses made from jersey, that drape and pleat. Incidentally, I took a photo of the Leroux shop in St. Germain, on a visit to Paris in 2009Â and this green dress caught my eye.
The Léger label, now designed by Max Azria, still specializes in bandage dresses to this day.
I actually came across one of their dresses via The Outnet today and it reminded me of a pair of Alaïa boots I had seen on the same site a few weeks ago. From memory, I thought they were somewhat similar and that I must have gotten the designers confused – both of them surely had to be by the same company.
When I looked again, I found that the boots are indeed by Alaïa and the dress is Léger.
It wasn’t until I was trying to find a vintage Alaïa photo for this post, that I realized Niki Taylor is wearing a longer version of the Alaïa slash bandage dress in it! Naomi and Linda also have one on in the original photo above (with actual skin – not skin-tone fabric showing through the slashes).
Talk about a full-circle déjà vu!
Images: Leroux shop photos taken by Yours Truly, Paris, 2009.
Léger Dress and Alaïa Boots from The Outnet; Alaia and models image courtesy of YasminLeBon.net; Elle image courtesy The Fashion Spot.
