Azzedine Alaia: The female ferocity and his untamed 'panthers'

July 17, 1991. The fashion world was bustling in the beautiful districts of Paris, hosting Fashion Week. True to his reputation as an antisocial who prefers the Italian dolce vita over the exuberance of fashion straight from New York in the post-Bush era, Azzedine Alaia invited a handful of privileged guests to attend a show in the calm of a discreet salon high above the French capital. All without much fanfare or unnecessary staging. Just silence, waiting, and suddenly ... panthers. What was supposed to be just another clothing presentation transformed, under astonished gazes, into a takeover as imposing as it was innovative.Under the hands of the master from Tunis, the leopard, for a mere runway walk, stopped evoking European bourgeois women trapped in a quest for thrill. It returned to what it should never have stopped being: a symbol...