WINNER CIRCLE: Luke Radloff, the South African creative director of Uni Form, is the first laureate of the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation x Orveda residency program, it was revealed Friday evening.
The new partnership between the foundation and the ultra-luxury, clean skin care brand stems from their common ideals and goals, including a passion for self-expression.
“As partners, they will endeavor to uphold the human need and desire to be oneself and explore creativity,” the foundation and Orveda said jointly in a statement. They will also support art.
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There are to be two prizes a year offered to two young, underrepresented fashion designers, giving a new space to explore and share their creativity with the world. The talent selection is based on a designer’s atypical and aspirational profile.
The jury choosing Radloff included Carla Sozzani, president of the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation; Olivier Saillard, director of the foundation; Marco Pecorari, director of the Parsons School in Paris; Sara Sozzani Maino, brand ambassador of the National Chamber of Italian Fashion and Condé Nast CNC creative adviser, and Nicolas Vu, chief executive officer and cofounder of Orveda.
Radloff and subsequent winners are to be granted a one-month training program and access to the foundation’s archives. Each will have a reference tutor linked to Parsons in Paris.
Toward the end of the residency, each chosen talent must create a mini-collection nodding to Alaïa and the fashion masters in the foundation’s collection. That fashion collection will then be shown first at the foundation and after presented in the Orveda maisons globally.
“Self-taught virtuoso Azzedine Alaïa never stopped learning throughout his life in an insatiable quest for perfection. Self-improvement governed his research and his work,” Sozzani said in the statement. “A great couturier without equal, he traced each pattern himself, cut each model, molding the shapes during days and nights of working in solitude.
“Through his foundation, he wanted to share and transmit his knowledge to new generations. The project with Orveda will make one of his dreams come true; today the mission of his foundation,” she continued. “Luke Radloff perfectly embodies the values and missions of the foundation: social responsibility and support of the values of craftsmanship.”
“Science and technology is at the basis of everything we do at Orveda. We are driven by the power of human intuition, creativity and artistic expression,” Vu said. “That is why alongside Orveda’s cutting-edge technological innovation we are also deeply committed to supporting and working with the arts.
“The aim of Orveda’s collaboration with the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation is to provide a new arena for underrepresented contemporary creatives to explore and unleash their unique perceptions of luxury and beauty,” he said.
Orveda is owned by Coty Inc.
Radloff’s Uni Form brand creates modular, trans-seasonal garments referencing South Africa. They are made with sustainability in mind.
At a dinner Friday evening that drew Nabi, Sozzani and influencers and press, Radloff thanked the foundation and Orveda, and said, “I am so excited to interpret the foundation archives through my perspective that I call ’emotional tailoring,’ which feels authentic given Mr. Alaïa’s sharp and extensive body of work.”
He pointed to South Africa’s famed World Heritage site called the “Cradle of Humankind,” near Johannesburg, and said the city “is where we make the clothes, this is where we build our community, this is our home…the origins of humanity, of true luxury, of adornment and craft.” But while South Africa has a long history, it also has struggles, he added, which is why its people are resilient and “full of hope.” That is why he calls his work “emotional tailoring.”
The Azzedine Alaïa Foundation, created in 2007 by the late French Tunisian designer, preserves and showcases his fashion. It hosts exhibitions in the art, fashion and design fields, and supports cultural and educational activities.