To many, the late designer Azzedine Alaïa is the man behind some of the early aughts’ most significant fashion moments, including when Halle Berry accepted her historic Academy Award for Best Actress in 2002 while dressed in a gown by Alaïa. But to legendary model and designer Naomi Campbell, Alaïa was “Papa.”
In Apple TV+’s docuseries “The Super Models,” Campbell, models Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington take viewers down memory lane through their rise as the world’s first supermodels.
Among the highlights Campbell discusses, she recounts her endearing relationship with Alaïa and how he became a protective father figure for the young model. Campbell, the daughter of a teen mother in London, said she never knew her biological father.
“That feeling of abandonment, there’s nothing she could’ve done to change that feeling with me,” she said. “I also believe a lot of that was part of my drive, too, not having my father figure in my life. But then I got blessed.”
Campbell said she met Alaïa in Paris as a teen during a chance encounter. While working in Paris at 16, Campbell said someone stole her purse with all the traveler’s checks her mother had given her.
“I was going to dinner with another model because she [took] pity on me, and that’s when I met Azzedine Alaïa,” she said. “He doesn’t speak English. I don’t speak French, but there’s something.”
During another encounter, Campbell said Alaïa gave her an outfit of his to try on, and after liking the look, he inquired about her mother and where Campbell stayed. At the time, she was alone and staying at a hotel.
After hearing that the young girl was alone and learning that her mother spoke French, Campbell connected the two where Alaïa explained that he would take care of Campbell while she lived with him.
“My mother did not know who she was talking to, never met him, but trusted him. And so, two days later, I moved into Rue du Parc Royale,” she said. It wasn’t long before Alaïa introduced Campbell to the vastness of the world.
“I met so many amazing people, I learned about art, architecture, design, most importantly I got to watch him work,” she said. “I got to be part of his work, and he really treated me like a daughter.”
Campbell recalled how Alaïa would cook her breakfast and dinner, they’d have typical father-daughter fights, and she’d even sneak out of his house to go clubbing.
“They’d call and tell him I was in the nightclub, he’d come down to the nightclub, and before he would take me home, he’d say, ‘You wore the outfit wrong,’ and he’d be fixing it. Because you have to imagine, the boutique was my closet. What girl of 16 years old has an Alaïa shop as her closet?!” Campbell gushed.
Alaïa took the role of surrogate father to Campbell very seriously. In one such example, Campbell described when an art director told her she thought her “breasts were perfect” before touching them.
“I called Papa immediately,” she said. “I called Papa right away, and Papa called him up and read him. He never came near me again. It served that I opened my mouth and would speak my truth because I believe that protected me, as well as who I was surrounded by.”
Alaïa and Campbell remained very close right up until the day he died in 2017. She said he was her protector and guided her through the industry. She described his death as a shock to her system. Through tears, she said she thought, “My papa was going to live forever.”
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