1. CREDITHERE
Daring is to not worry about the status quo, to not worry about
conventions, and to just do what you think is right. For that you need
enormous confidence,” observed Dame Zaha Hadid, in an essay she
wrote for Harper’s Bazaar in 2014, shortly before the opening of
Women Fashion Power, an exhibition she designed at London’s Design Museum.
When the award winning Iraqi-British architect passed away unexpectedly, aged 65,
on March 31 in Miami, the world not only lost one of its leading form makers, but
a fashion original who championed the modern and experimental in her choice of
dramatic jewellery and outwear that was considered unwearable by some.
“I like very strong clothes. For a long time people would ask where I got certain
pieces I’d had for years, when in reality they were the things that nobody else
would touch,” said the architect in a 2004 interview, shortly after receiving the
Pritzker Architecture Prize in Chicago.
Zaha was a rare and refreshing muse in the world of fashion, as a commanding
woman of Middle Eastern heritage who was over 50. In addition to her gravity-
defying buildings, Zaha would leave behind a museum-quality collection
encompassing some of the greatest moments in fashion over the past 30 years,
many of which also shed light on the architect’s cosmopolitan upbringing and
her never-ending fascination with the future.
Born in Baghdad on October 31, 1950, Zaha grew up in one of the capital’s
first Bauhaus-inspired villas. “My family was quiet eccentric for that time.
Both my parents were interested in architecture and design, and filled our
home with beautiful furniture and objects,” recalled Zaha, whose parents
played a pivotal role in shaping her appreciation for modern design. A noted
politician, economist and industrialist, her father Mohammed Hadid
attended the London School of Economics in the late 1920s before
returning to Iraq, where he served as the Minister of Finance from 1958-
1960. He would also head the progressive Iraqi Democratic Party, which
advocated for secularism and democracy in Iraq. “My father was a liberal
and a modernist in every way, and I think his outlook rubbed off on
TALKINGPOINTThe
T H E O T H E R S I D E O F
AHAIn tribute to the late
Zaha Hadid, Bazaar
explores the legendary
architect’s modernist
approach to style
British/Iraqi
architect
Zaha Hadid
photographed by
Mary McCartney
Words by ALEX AUBRY
➤
2. into sculptural drapes and volumes on her
body. Years later as a teenager, she mixed
Paris couture pieces with items purchased
from Biba, the legendary London fashion
emporium frequented by Marianne Faithfull,
Twiggy and Julie Christie. “When I was
a teenager, I had a Chanel suit, but
I would mix it up and wear it with different
tops and skirts,” she once pointed out in an
interview, alluding to a habit for altering and
customising designs, which resulted in her first
design commission at the age of seven.
Noticing her daughter’s burgeoning talent,
Zaha’s mother gave her permission to redecorate
her own bedroom in addition to
a guestroom in the family home. The young girl
went about selecting and designing custom
pieces, including asymmetrical mirrors, which
were fabricated by a furniture workshop in
Beirut. “I spent some of the happiest years of my
life in Beirut, it was like a second home to me,”
noted Zaha, who moved to the Lebanese capital
in 1968 to pursue a degree in mathematics from
the American University of Beirut, a sprawling
wooded campus overlooking the Mediterranean.
Considered the ‘Paris of the Middle East’, the
young Zaha found herself living independently for
the first time in one of the region’s most
cosmopolitan and style conscious cities. At a time
when fashion boutiques had yet to emerge in the
Arabian Gulf region, Beirut became the
destination of choice for chic women across the
Middle East to shop and attend fashion shows
held in grand hotel ballrooms. As a student, she
frequented Rue Hamra, a chic thoroughfare filled
with theatres, cafes and boutiques selling the
latest offerings from Sonia Rykiel, Cacharel
and Charles Jourdan. It was a period of
experimentation, as she began to define her
personal approach to dressing as a young adult.
Shortly after graduating, Zaha moved to
London in 1972 to attend the radical (AA).
At the time, London was in a state of gloom with
high unemployment, workers’ strikes and daily
electricity outages. As a reaction, Zaha took to
wearing outrageous outfits at the AA, where she
attended lectures in a Chantal Thomass coat
made entirely of hot-pink feathers. “The English
allow you to do what you want. They don’t really
care and I thought it was a stunning coat. We did
a school field trip to Russia and I wore it in
Moscow. Imagine me standing in a queue at
Lenin’s tomb. I don’t think the soldiers had seen
anything like it,” recalled Zaha of her burgeoning signature style
blending comfort with notoriety.
“It was a moment in history when people were making great pieces,
and that set a precedent. It was also a period that was very anti-design,
where being modern wasn’t about looking to the past for inspiration, but
towards the future,” noted Zaha of a point of view that equally informed
her approach to designing buildings as well as dressing. By 1980, when
she had opened her own design studio in a former Victorian school
building in London’s Clerkenwell, Zaha was splitting her days between
teaching at the AA in the morning and working in her office in the
evenings. Yet her fascination with avant-garde fashion would continue,
with a particular attraction to designers who dared to experiment with
materials and proportions.
She became a regular at the minimalist Joseph boutique on London’s
Sloane Street, designed by Eva Jiricná with its mix of designer and
indie labels. It is there that she purchased some of her first pieces by
Japanese designers such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei
Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. “I’ve always had an interest in the
me,” noted Zaha, who developed her love of
art and drawing through her mother
Wajeeha, an elegant woman who wore ‘new
look’ designs by Dior and Jacques Griffe.
To listen to the architect describe the
Baghdad of her childhood is to recall an era
in the history of the region that has largely
been forgotten by a younger generation. The
Iraqi capital at the time was a cosmopolitan
hub of modern ideas in literature, architecture,
music and the visual arts, which would also
shape her upbringing. “When I was growing
up in Baghdad, the great modernist architects
of the day such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Giò Ponti and Walter Gropius were all
being invited to design and build great
projects,” Zaha recalled of the period adding,
“There was a great sense of optimism at
a moment of nation-building, with a lot of
emphasis on innovation and progress. That
ideology of building a better future has always
been important to me and the development of
my work.”
For the first six years of her life, Zaha attended
a French Catholic school that could be considered
a model of religious tolerance in Baghdad, where
Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Bahai and Yazidi
students played and studied together. “I am
a Muslim who went to a nun’s school, where there
was no difference between the Christians, the
Muslims and the Jews,” she recalled in an
interview, noting that the school’s headmistress
would serve as one of her earliest role models.
“She really believed in women and was deeply
committed to education for girls. She pushed
us to educate ourselves and gave us confidence
to do things. It’s interesting because most
people don’t picture a convent in the Middle
East as a place of empowerment,” mused Zaha,
who would later attend a boarding school in
Hertfordshire, England in the early ’60s.
Her parents also believed in exposing Zaha
and her two older brothers to diverse cultures
through travel. There were frequent trips to
equally cosmopolitan Cairo and Beirut, where
the family would stay at the chic St George
hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, as well as
trips to London each summer, where they
would visit art galleries and museums. Such
trips were also an opportunity for her mother
to update her wardrobe with the latest Paris and
London fashions. “My parents took me to
Rome when I was seven years old and it stayed
with me. The flamboyance of Italy was similar to Beirut. I love those
cities, Baghdad or Cairo, which are very dense with rivers,” she recalled.
As a child, Zaha also visited the Great Mosque in Cordoba. “That was
the most stunning space. Of course there are lots of other truly great
spaces but this building had a tremendous impact on me.”
Zaha “had a fabulous childhood,” growing up in an environment in
Baghdad filled with freedom and creativity. “My parents instilled in me
a passion for discovery, and I am forever grateful to them for introducing
me to art and science in a way that drew no boundaries between them.”
She also was encouraged to cultivate her personality and self-confidence
from an early age. “I think it’s very important that parents give their
children confidence, because without that confidence they can’t move
forward in life. So I’m grateful to them for allowing me to be eccentric,”
recalled the late architect, whose parents gave her the freedom to make
her own decisions even when it came to cultivating her personal style.
“They would buy me a dress and I would cut off the sleeves,” Zaha
said, who as an adolescent went through a period of shunning
conventional clothes in favour of Chinese silks, which she would pin
DAVEM.BENETT/GETTYIMAGES
NICKHARVEY/WIREIMAGE.ANTHONYHARVEY/GETTYIMAGES
88 HarpersBazaarArabia.com May 2016
The
XXXThe
unconventional, and the Japanese at
the time produced beautifully
tailored asymmetric garments. They
were intriguing when laid out flat, and
would transform into something
completely different when worn on the
body,” observed Zaha, who was known
for wearing pieces inside out or upside
down. “They were incredibly versatile,
and it was a way for me to double their
use. Also, Miyake’s pleated pieces travel
well, and I could easily pack them in
a suitcase without having to worry about
what to wear.” Over the years, the architect
purchased close to 1,000 Miyake pleated
dresses, as well as several Yohji Yamamoto
asymmetrical wire-hemmed coats.
Towards the latter half of the decade, Zaha
also discovered the architectural creations of
Italian designer Romeo Gigli; acquiring
variations of his cocoon coats and jackets
featuring accordion-pleated sleeves at Browns on
South Molton Street. What attracted her to these
designers was their ability to convey power
through dress. “They give you confidence. When
I was teaching, I had a beautiful Yohji jacket. If you
buttoned it one way you could create a bustle at the
back, and unbuttoned, it would transform into
a long jacket. One day a colleague said to me, ‘Zaha,
you can be intimidating when you are so well dressed.’
When what he really meant was, ‘You come across as
confident’. You can see a transformation in people
when they wear something that is unique or well made.
Their confidence level begins to change, because they
see themselves in a different way,” observed the architect,
who during the late ’80s began to travel frequently to the
United States where she taught at Harvard, Columbia
and the University of Illinois.
“I used to spend a lot of time in New York when I was
teaching in the States,” recalled Zaha, who was a regular
guest at the Mercer Hotel in Soho, where she soaked up the
downtown art scene and would stock up on designer
Stephen Sprouse’s punk and graffiti inspired creations.
Although frequently photographed looking serious and aloof
in a dark sculpted Miyake coat, there was another sartorial
side to Zaha that was playful and glamorous. It appeared at
private dinners, the Serpentine Gallery’s annual summer party,
or while on vacation in Rome, Istanbul, Thailand or Miami.
During these relaxed moments away from her office, Zaha
experimented with colour and whimsical embellishments,
often pairing her signature American Apparel tank tops and
leggings (which she owned in several shades) with architectonic
jackets, opera coats and capes by the likes Martin Margiela, Miu
Miu, Lanvin and Giambattista Valli. They came in mouth-
watering shades of lime, yellow and fuchsia, while others featured
unusual prints, constellations of crystals or feathers. Many were
custom-made for her by designer friends such as Miuccia Prada,
who created a coat for her entirely covered in long black strands
of paillettes.
Despite her increasingly busy work schedule over the years, Zaha
continued to gravitate towards a new generation of designers
incorporating new technologies into their creative process. Among
them were Gareth Pugh, Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Peter
Pilotto, and Iris Van Herpen. A champion of young talent, she also
opened her gallery space in East London to designers such as Thomas
Tait and Lebanese jeweller, Noor Fares, to present their collections and
support them as a regular client. “I have always felt lucky and extremely
proud to count Zaha not only as a loyal client, but also as a friend. She has
always been an inspiration to me,” noted Thomas of the Iraqi-born
architect, whose approach to design, in all its ocular guises, promises to
inspire and empower long into the future.
“ I T ’ S V E R Y
I M P O R T A N T T H A T
P A R E N T S G I V E T H E I R
C H I L D R E N
C O N F I D E N C E , S O
T H A T T H E Y C A N
M O V E F O R W A R D I N
L I F E . I ’ M G R A T E F U L
T O M I N E F O R
A L L O W I N G M E T O B E
E C C E N T R I C ”
Z a h a H a d i d
Attending a NSPCC
Neo-Romantic Art Gala
in London, 2015
Zaha attends a L’Wren
Scott cocktail party
during London Fashion
Week 2013, wearing
Prada S/S13
Wearing a Mary
Katrantzou cape from
A/W13 at theVeuve
Clicquot Business
Woman Award in 2013
Zaha at a
garden party
in London,
2013, wearing
a custom Prada
coat with long
strands of
pailettes
At the Serpentine
Gallery Summer
Party in 2012,
wearing a leopard-
print cape from
Giambatista
Valli’s first haute
couture collection
for A/W11
TALKINGPOINT
■