Alaïa Alliance

For whom Schnabel tolls

Jacqueline Schnabel s five feet ten inches of compact curves and nonstop legs might have been custom-made for the erotic tailoring of Azzedine Ala'ia, with whom—in an auspicious marriage of form and function—she has just gone into business. Belgian Jacqueline, wife of Julian, hopes to open Alai'a's first Manhattan boutique by the end of this winter. "It should be not too finished, not too much chrome," she says of the shop, for which her husband will design the furniture. "Decay can be beautiful." Her introduction to Alai'a's clothes took place in Pans, where she and Julian arranged the nifty trade of a Schnabel painting on glass for a small Ala'ia wardrobe, including a mink coat. Jacqueline thinks "dresses with big bows" are strictly for photographs, and calls Alai'a's "sexy, uncomplicated" designs the work of an artist. Her own artist husband also admires Alai'a's work, although, like any good husband in a postmodernist age, he occasionally, she says, wants to see her in something "more plain, from the fifties."

BEN BRANTLEY