TUNISIAN TRADITIONS OF HOSPITALITY: THE TABLE AS A SOCIAL RITUAL
In traditional Tunisian culture, hospitality is a foundational social value, and the table functions as its primary setting. Meals are conceived not as individual or strictly domestic acts, but as collective rituals structured around openness, generosity, and continuity. Food is shared, time is expansive rather than scheduled, and the presence of guests, expected or unexpected, is considered a natural extension of daily life. The table is therefore less a functional piece of furniture than a social structure: a space where relationships are established, maintained, and reaffirmed.
Alongside food, the offering of mint tea or coffee plays a crucial role. These beverages mark extended moments of conversation and shared presence that often continue long after a meal has ended. Sitting together, talking, and remaining at the table without urgency are essential aspects of the ritual. Informal social practices such as conversation, storytelling, and occasionally simple card or tile games may emerge naturally, not as organized entertainment but as ways of prolonging togetherness. In this context, the act of “staying” is more important than the act of eating itself.
This cultural framework emphasizes continuity, proximity, and care, shaping an understanding of hospitality in which the value lies not in spectacle, but in sustained presence.
- CHILDHOOD AND INHERITANCE: ALAÏA’S TUNISIAN DOMESTIC MODE
Azzedine Alaïa explicitly traced his relationship to hospitality and the table back to his childhood in Tunisia, where he was raised by his grandmother in a household that was constantly open. Extended family, neighbors, and unexpected guests gathered daily around the same table, often in large numbers and across generations. Meals were long, informal, and deeply communal, with no rigid separation between domestic life and social life.
Within this environment, the table acted as a space of transmission: of values, stories, behaviors, and mutual care. The repetition of shared meals created continuity, while openness ensured that belonging was never exclusive. This early experience profoundly shaped Alaïa’s approach to both personal relationships and professional life.
When he moved to Paris, Alaïa consciously reproduced this model. Rather than adapting to a more compartmentalized or formal mode of hospitality, he transplanted the Tunisian domestic structure into his new context, maintaining the same principles of openness, generosity, and shared time.
- COOKING AS CARE: NOURISHING AND DRESSING THE BODY
The spatial organization of Alaïa’s homes reflected this vision of hospitality. Living spaces, ateliers, kitchens, and dining areas were not separated into distinct zones but conceived as interconnected environments. The kitchen and dining room functioned as the beating heart of the space, where work and life continuously overlapped.
The table became both a physical and symbolic center: a place of encounter, dialogue, rest, and regeneration. In contrast to the vertical hierarchies of the fashion system, it offered a horizontal structure, where relationships were built through shared time rather than status.
- THE DINNER TABLE AS A CREATIVE AND SOCIAL SPACE
Alaïa’s dinners, held in his Parisian home-studios from rue de Bellechasse to rue du Parc Royal and later rue de Moussy, became legendary within the fashion world. Models, atelier artisans, artists, writers, musicians, editors, and close friends were regularly welcomed around his table. These gatherings were marked by a deliberate suspension of hierarchy: well-known figures sat alongside seamstresses, assistants, and staff, reflecting a conception of community closer to an extended family than to an industry network.
Hospitality followed precise, almost ritualized rules. Alaïa insisted on serving his guests himself and often sat down only after everyone else had been fed, positioning care as a form of quiet authority. At lunchtime, work in the atelier would regularly stop altogether, reinforcing the idea that the table was not peripheral to creation, but central to it.
Beyond eating, these moments were structured by conversation, tea or coffee, and the slow rhythm of shared time. The emphasis was never on productivity or performance, but on presence and exchange.
- HYBRID SPACES: THE HOUSE, THE ATELIER AND THE KITCHEN
The relationship between Carla Sozzani and Azzedine Alaïa constitutes the deepest, most complex, and longest-lasting core of Sozzani’s professional and private life. It is not simply a collaboration between editor and designer, but a bond based on absolute trust, shared time, and mutual recognition of the same creative ethic.
Alaïa, a Tunisian designer based in Paris, is a radically atypical figure in the fashion system: independent to the point of obstinacy, resistant to schedules, distrustful of commercial logic, and deeply tied to an artisanal and almost sculptural idea of making fashion.
Sozzani meets Alaïa in the 1980s, at a moment when the designer is already known for his talent but not yet fully integrated into institutional fashion circuits. From the beginning, Sozzani’s role is not that of a traditional “promoter,” but of a cultural mediator: she places him in the right editorial contexts, protects his image, and builds a narrative that respects his refusal of the fashion spectacle system. Through Vogue Italia, but especially through personal relationships, Sozzani contributes to making Alaïa visible without distorting him.
What makes this relationship unique is the absence of any attempt at control. Sozzani does not ask Alaïa to adapt: on the contrary, she structures the context around him so that he can remain true to himself. This approach rare in a sector dominated by strategy and acceleration, makes Sozzani a “silent” but decisive figure in Alaïa’s trajectory. Their relationship consolidates over the years into a true existential alliance, made of daily interaction, continuous dialogue, and radical respect for the other’s independence.
After Alaïa died in 2017, Sozzani’s role changed profoundly: from companion on the journey to custodian. The Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, located in the Marais and housed in the spaces that were the designer’s home and atelier, is not transformed into a celebratory museum, but maintained as a living place, open to exhibitions, research, and new dialogues. The responsibility assumed by Sozzani is enormous: preserving not only works and archives, but above all, Alaïa’s spirit, his refusal of seriality, and his intimate relationship with time and the body. In this sense, the foundation is not a neutral institution, but the direct continuation of a human relationship.
- AFTER ALAÏA: PRESERVING THE RITUAL OF HOSPITALITY
This dimension did not disappear with Alaïa’s passing. It has been consciously preserved and reinterpreted by the Maison through initiatives such as La Table Alaïa, which revives the idea of dinner as a meeting point between fashion, gastronomy, design, and cultural dialogue.
These projects do not function as lifestyle branding, but as a continuation of Alaïa’s original vision: the maison as an open house, where creativity remains inseparable from generosity, care, and shared presence. The ritual of the table thus endures as a central element of Alaïa’s legacy, extending his way of being in the world beyond garments and into lived experience.
Alaïa’s dinners, held in his Parisian home-studios from rue de Bellechasse to rue du Parc Royal and later rue de Moussy, became legendary within the fashion world. Models, atelier artisans, artists, writers, musicians, editors, and close friends were regularly welcomed around his table. These gatherings were marked by a deliberate suspension of hierarchy: well-known figures sat alongside seamstresses, assistants, and staff, reflecting a conception of community closer to an extended family than to an industry network.
Hospitality followed precise, almost ritualized rules. Alaïa insisted on serving his guests himself and often sat down only after everyone else had been fed, positioning care as a form of quiet authority. At lunchtime, work in the atelier would regularly stop altogether, reinforcing the idea that the table was not peripheral to creation, but central to it.
Beyond eating, these moments were structured by conversation, tea or coffee, and the slow rhythm of shared time. The emphasis was never on productivity or performance, but on presence and exchange.
The relationship between Carla Sozzani and Azzedine Alaïa constitutes the deepest, most complex, and longest-lasting core of Sozzani’s professional and private life. It is not simply a collaboration between editor and designer, but a bond based on absolute trust, shared time, and mutual recognition of the same creative ethic.
Alaïa, a Tunisian designer based in Paris, is a radically atypical figure in the fashion system: independent to the point of obstinacy, resistant to schedules, distrustful of commercial logic, and deeply tied to an artisanal and almost sculptural idea of making fashion.
Sozzani meets Alaïa in the 1980s, at a moment when the designer is already known for his talent but not yet fully integrated into institutional fashion circuits. From the beginning, Sozzani’s role is not that of a traditional “promoter,” but of a cultural mediator: she places him in the right editorial contexts, protects his image, and builds a narrative that respects his refusal of the fashion spectacle system. Through Vogue Italia, but especially through personal relationships, Sozzani contributes to making Alaïa visible without distorting him.
What makes this relationship unique is the absence of any attempt at control. Sozzani does not ask Alaïa to adapt: on the contrary, she structures the context around him so that he can remain true to himself. This approach rare in a sector dominated by strategy and acceleration, makes Sozzani a “silent” but decisive figure in Alaïa’s trajectory. Their relationship consolidates over the years into a true existential alliance, made of daily interaction, continuous dialogue, and radical respect for the other’s independence.
After Alaïa died in 2017, Sozzani’s role changed profoundly: from companion on the journey to custodian. The Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, located in the Marais and housed in the spaces that were the designer’s home and atelier, is not transformed into a celebratory museum, but maintained as a living place, open to exhibitions, research, and new dialogues. The responsibility assumed by Sozzani is enormous: preserving not only works and archives, but above all, Alaïa’s spirit, his refusal of seriality, and his intimate relationship with time and the body. In this sense, the foundation is not a neutral institution, but the direct continuation of a human relationship.
This dimension did not disappear with Alaïa’s passing. It has been consciously preserved and reinterpreted by the Maison through initiatives such as La Table Alaïa, which revives the idea of dinner as a meeting point between fashion, gastronomy, design, and cultural dialogue.
These projects do not function as lifestyle branding, but as a continuation of Alaïa’s original vision: the maison as an open house, where creativity remains inseparable from generosity, care, and shared presence. The ritual of the table thus endures as a central element of Alaïa’s legacy, extending his way of being in the world beyond garments and into lived experience.