Mining the Surface Archives: Gone, But Not Forgotten

Vanessa Friedman on Alaïa: “As a designer, he does things with fabric and form no one else even thinks about. As a man, he is a very generous person who cares deeply about what he does and the people who work for him, and the women he dresses. But with Alaïa, there is no separating the person from the fashion designer. He really loves what he does. What is striking to me about his clothing is that I have the first Alaïa skirt I ever bought, probably about 14 years ago, and everything since then, and I wear every piece over and over and over again. They don’t date.” Surface #131

Zaha Hadid Surface #100

Your career as a woman in architecture has been one of breaking barriers. Which barriers, if any, do you feel like you still need to break through?

I need to break through the corporate domain. I don’t play golf with the guys or go out for drinking or boating or whatever, so that eliminates you completely. You can’t join the boys’ club—well, you can, it’s just more difficult. I don’t think there are any barriers. I think they’re more cultural. I think the mindset about women has changed a lot, but there are still areas we haven’t been able to get to. I know for a fact that if you’re a woman and you’re opinionated, you’re considered difficult, you’re considered pushy. But a guy is expected to be like that. That has to change. There’s another issue I think that’s very important: Men and women’s relationships have not been normalized. I mean this in the sense that a guy can’t go and have dinner with a woman without people thinking something wrong. When that changes, we’ll find professional behavior will be improved. Then you can meet with a man and discuss work and stuff like that.

San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King recently wrote, “Divas in architecture tend to be male and tend to measure success by the number of heads that they turn.” As someone who’s been described as “architecture’s diva,” how do you feel about that?

“Diva” in their lingo is derogatory. They don’t call a guy a diva. They call him I don’t know what. In the end, architecture is very demanding. It’s not as glamorous as being a movie star, though they have to work hard as well. With architecture, like any design, there’s a groupie syndrome, and if you allow it to go to your head, you become like that, spending all your time thinking about how to resolve your problems. There isn’t time to worry about all this kind of stuff.”

Sonia Rykiel Surface #27

“The creator is someone who walks on a thread with their arms spread, because every five minutes he is going to fall. And grabs onto everything he finds—a window, a room, a statue, hair. It’s terribly intoxicating and terribly trying because at [one given] moment, you have the impression that you have found something, and then one hour later, you are in pain because that’s not it after all.”

Tibor Kalman Surface #15

“For me the problem with art is that, with rare exceptions (Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, et al.), it hangs forlornly in obligatory museums, or beckoningly in well-lit galleries. It sits and waits for people to come visit (or buy) the problem with commercial projects is that their goals are stupid (destroy competition, amass power, make money, et cetera) If as a creative, you don’t mind striving for these goals, you’ll be rich. If you have other ideas, it’s a little more complicated.”