DUBAI: Before late Tunisian couturier Azzedine Alaïa passed away in Paris in November 2018, he was in the process of endowing the Azzedine Alaïa Association — a nonprofit administered by his closest accomplices Carla Sozzani, Olivier Saillard and Cristoph von Weyhe — in an effort to preserve his work and archives. Now, 27-months after his death, the French government has granted official foundation status to the Azzedine Alaïa Association, announced an emotional von Wehye in the courtyard of Alaïa’s home in Paris’s Marais this week. The official foundation status effectively makes it a museum. The couturier had been saving his own work since the 1980s, and he had been collecting the work of designers he admired for even longer, including pieces from Charles James, Paul Poiret, Vionnet, Chanel, Madame Grès and many others. Together, his private collection of clothing occupied five floors and approximately 14,760 square feet in Mr. Alaïa’s compound on rue de la Verrerie. And it wasn’t just clothes. The late designer collected furniture from designers including Pierre Paulin, Jean Prouvé, Shiro Kuramata and Marc Newson, as well as books.