Photo: Alaïa via NYTimes

Last night Azzedine Alaïa debuted his first couture collection—in fact, it’s the first time the designer’s shown anything on the official fashion calendar in over eight years.  Though he usually stages small presentations in his atelier when he feels like it, Alaïa presented a proper collection on an all white runway for a teeny tiny audience including France’s Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand. Vanessa Friedman writes that the collection of impeccable wool coats and zipped up gowns elevates Alaïa from fashion’s favorite designer to “national treasure” and Suzy Menkes says, “The collection was less about silhouette than about how much was packed between the tracery of lines: tufts like errant weeds on the woolen surface of a skirt; tiny craters woven into a coat at the hipline; textures that included dense curly fur or gleaming crocodile. At the end of the show came a latticework dress where suede, velvet and silken ribbons were fused artfully together.” Following Alaïa’s ten minute standing ovation Mitterand said, “Designers all have a world—but Alaïa has a universe.” Click here to see the rest of couture.