Azzedine Alaïa Foundation

The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation stands at eighteen rue de la Verrerie, housed within a sprawling, interconnected complex of former industrial buildings that the designer began purchasing in the late nineteen-eighties. Before Alaïa transformed this space into his personal sanctuary, part of the property served as a warehouse for the historic Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville department store. During his extensive renovations, workers uncovered large-scale, hand-painted maps of the world directly on the walls of the great glass-roofed hall, remnants from a time when the building provided charitable meals to the city's poorest residents.