azzedine alaia

Katie Holmes donned a banded lace overlay Alaia dress with suede Proenza Schouler lace-up booties at the 2011 Video Music Awards in LA. She kept her accessories to a minimum — a black croc-embossed watch and double wrap bracelet — and left her hair and makeup au naturel. We picked a peach clutch and stud earrings to complete Katie's award show style. Unfortunately this exact dress isn't available online, but shop here for a similar frock with other complementing pieces.

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>> It was confirmed earlier this Summer that Sofia Coppola planned to wed her longtime boyfriend, Phoenix's Thomas Mars, this month — but now, there's an exact date: Saturday, Aug. 27. The couple plan to hold an "intimate family wedding" in Bernalda — the hometown of Coppola's great-grandparents — with the civil ceremony celebrated in the garden of Palazzo Margherita, a 19th-century southern Italian villa her father Francis Ford Coppola has been renovating. “The ceremony will mark the end of renovations at the palace, which will soon be inaugurated as a resort, open to the public,” said Coppola pere’s great-nephew Gaetano Russo who, on the day of the wedding, plans to screen scenes from both Sofia and Francis Ford's movies on the facades of about 10 buildings in the village.

There still hasn't been any wedding dress designer confirmation — Marc Jacobs, Coppola's close friend and the most likely candidate for the job, seemed unsure while denying that he was doing the honors back in June, and after Coppola attended Azzedine Alaia's couture show last month, rumors circulated that Alaia may be the dress's designer.

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>> Azzedine Alaia recently turned down one of fashion's most high-profile gigs, and now he has some choice words about two of fashion's most high-profile figures.

On Karl Lagerfeld: "Happily, women love me and buy my clothes, unlike Karl who’s never been loved like me! [Laughs.] . . . I don’t like his fashion, his spirit, his attitude. It’s too much caricature. Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life. That doesn’t mean that he’s not great, but he’s part of another system. He has capacity. One day he does photography, the next he does advertisements for Coca-Cola. I would rather die than see my face in a car advertisement. We don’t do the same work. And I think that he is not doing a favor to young [designers] who might think it works that way. They’re going to fall before they retire."

On Anna Wintour: "I said it before. She runs the business [of Vogue] very well, but not the fashion part. When I see how she is dressed, I don’t believe in her tastes one second. I can say it loudly! She hasn’t photographed my work in years even if I am a best seller in the US and I have 140 square meters at Barneys. American women love me; I don’t need her support at all. Anna Wintour doesn’t deal with pictures; she is just doing PR and business, and she scares everybody. But when she sees me, she is the scared one. [Laughs.] Other people think like me, but don’t say it because they are afraid that Vogue won’t photograph them. Anyway, who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one. Take Diana Vreeland, she is remembered because she was so chic. What she did with the magazine was great, with Avedon and all the great photographers. Vogue remains while its fashion editors come and go."

>> Azzedine Alaia was called to take the open creative director job at Dior, recently vacated by John Galliano, he has just confirmed. But: he said he wasn't interested — flattered, but not something he was going to pursue. The story of what happened with Galliano was a sad story, he added, and he didn't want to be part of the next chapter. As the Financial Times's Vanessa Friedman points out: "The sheer fact that the Dior leadership was thinking this way does ... make me think the field may be more open than the fashion world suspects. ... Since I would never under-estimate Bernard Arnault, chairman of Dior (which actually owns LVMH), nor CEO Sidney Toledano, ... this makes me wonder if perhaps the group has some interesting plans to change the way it does business up its sleeve, and will use the new designer as an excuse to do so. If so, it would be a revolution that would have an enormous ripple effect on the whole fashion industry. My guess is other brands would immediately fall in behind; everyone is looking for a reason to change and slow down, but everyone is scared to be the brand that sticks its neck out." [FT]

>> Azzedine Alaia, who typically closes out Paris Fashion Week with an off-the-schedule intimate presentation in his studio, has announced that he will make a rare appearance during the upcoming Paris couture week. The designer indicated that he will show what he described as "semicouture" designs sometime during the week, which runs July 4 through 8. [WWD]