“Fifty years from now, Parisian women will no longer have hips; their bosoms will diminish. Tomorrow’s woman will be an eternal little girl; there will be no place for the mature woman.”

(around 1950)

Jacques Fath  

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Biography

Jacques Fath (born Maisons-Laffitte, France, 6 September 1912 – Paris, France, 13 November 1954) was a French fashion designer who was considered one of the three dominant influences on postwar haute couture, the others being Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain.

Young Jacques, although already very interested in fashion, studies bookkeeping and business law at his father’s urges and has a brief career at the Paris Bourse. He had also completed a year of military service, when film director Léonide Moguy casts the handsome young man in one of his films and Jacques enrolls in drama school. Here he befriends model and aspiring actress Geneniéve Boucher de la Bruyére, a former secretary to Coco Chanel.

At 21, Jacques begins educating himself about fashion and costume design by exploring museums, books and the seams of his mother’s and sister’s dresses. Four years later Jacques takes the plunge and starts his business in a small space at 32 Rue la Boétie, working together with dressmaker Mme Gulbenkian, soon his partner and house premiére (head of all seamstresses and dressmakers).

The first few years his success remains modest and financially Jacques’ business barely survived and when the Chic Parisiennes begin to visit his studio he uses the down payment for a dress commission to buy the fabric to create it…

In 1939 Jacques asks Geneviéve to marry him and when she is wearing her husband’s asymmetrical drape dress and fluttery cape, she creates a stir at the Grande Nuit de Longchamps, a horse race society event. For the first time Vogue reports about Jacques: “He is inspired. He has a vision. He will succeed.”  Jacques and Geneviéve become one of the most photographed couples in Paris, her being a celebrity as a cover girl and him for his good looks. Business takes of, but soon World War II erupts and Jacques is drafted to serve the French Army as a gunner second class. He is taken prisoner by the German forces shortly before Paris falls under the Occupation.

Not for long though and Jacques returns to Paris and resumes control of the House of Fath by buying out his partner, Mme Gulbenkian. He joins other couturiers in keeping the city’s fashion pride alive, while being closed off from the rest of the world. Finally Jacques finds his first successes, using yards of tartan (which he did to mock the germans occupiers) and designing a number of tunic dresses and peasant skirts, suitable for women riding bikes, which were feminine and sporty at the same time. Jacques is determined to reinvent seduction. The house of Fath relocates and a son, Philippe, is born.

After the liberation of Paris, the House of Fath starts its legendary years of success, which will go on till Jacques death in 1954.

“One cannot understand the workings of haute couture without the realization that it is based on publicity.”

Jacques and Geneviéve use their celebrity status for marketing purposes (and pleasure ofcourse….). They could be seen everywhere and their yearly themed balls, held at their home the Chateau de Corbeville, were highly anticipated events. The guest list could top 800 and included the press as well as society patrons and hollywood stars. Genevieve personified the early ’50’s desire for a return to femininity and the editors of the style magazines were happy to take her lead.

The White and Red Ball on June 15, 1951, is one of their most famous events. The scenery is recreating an 18th century masterpieces like Gilles and l’Indifferent from Watteau and a stunning painting from Princess Troubetzkoi posing as the Marquise de Pompadour for La Tour. Each guest must interpret his or her own interpretation of a costume for a 18th century white ball with ruby accessories. More than four hundred guests attending the ball, one of the years foremost social events, arrive one after the other at the Chateau, whose gardens are attributed to Le Notre, the garden architect from Versailles.

The post war world was ready to embrace everything French and wealthy Americans preferred the French fashion over the collections of the American designers, but for an unknown reason the House of Fath wasn’t embraced by them yet. So Jacques and Geneviéve decided to use their celebrity status once again and travelled to the United States for a  three month tour. Geneviéve’s wardrobe consisted of 35 outfits for day and evening, 17 hats, 16 pairs of shoes, 10 handbags, 4 umbrella’s and numerous other accessories.

After their return, Jacques secures a deal with Seventh Avenue manufacturer Joseph Halpert to design two ready-to-wear collections a year under the label “Jacques Fath for Joseph Halpert”.

Jacques Fath was a visionair and had an ability to predict trends. His choice of models was brilliant and after he restyled them, they all became the most sought after mannequins in Paris, like his favorite Simone Micheline Bodin. She was renamed and recreated (he let her cut her hair extremely short) by Jacques , who told her, “We already have a Simone; you look to me like a Bettina.”

During his career, Jacques Fath hired several young new designers as assistants and apprentices, many continued to form their own Fashion Houses, including Hubert de Givenchy, Guy Laroche, and Valentino Garavan. He was also very polite and respectful for his team. He called his seamstresses always by their first name, never forgot a birthday and offered a wedding dress to his female workers getting married. And the more than 500 workers had tremendous respect for Jacques.

The House of Fath also produces a lot fragrances, starting of with Chasuble, Iris Gris and Canasta. And in 1950 Jacques opens a boutique in Paris, offering affordable luxuries like scarves, stockings and men’s ties.  In 1954, Jacques launches a prêt-a-porter line, Jacques Fath Université, this to the snobbish horror of many in the haute couture establishment!  

At the end of the year, Jacques Fath dies of leukemia, only 42 years old and just a few weeks after his last collection. Geneviéve keeps the House running for three more years with er husband’s former associates. In 1957 the company’s haute couture operations ceased to exist, but the business went on producing perfumes, gloves, hosiery and other accessories.

Jacques Fath, who has been described as extremely effeminate and a former lover of the French film director Léonide Moguy. Geneviève Boucher de la Bruyère, his wife came from an aristocratic family and was supposedly a lesbian.

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In 2010, after several tries to revive Jacques Fath as an haute couture house, the Alliance Designers Group, current owner of the name Jacques Fath is now reviving the famed label as an accessories brand under the creative direction of Laurence Dumenil.

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 (Photograph by Irving Penn, 2003)

I met Olivier Theyskens ones in Paris, many years ago. I was walking the streets with a friend, who was modeling at the time and knew Olivier. I had seen pictures of his work and admired his style, but at the moment we met I didn’t know he was the Olivier Theyskens and just stood there fascinated by his beautiful androgynous face…

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Born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1977, Olivier Theyskens decides at a very early age he wants to design Haute Couture. His parents are always very supportive of his dreams. At eighteen he registers at Brussels’ prestigious La Cambre school of visual arts, but two years later he drops out because he thinks he’s wasting his time and his parents money. He starts his own label Olivier Theyskens. His first collection is titled Gloomy Trips.

(garment from first collection is titled Gloomy Trips)

Olivier believes in design for design’s sake. So much so that he creates his debut collection in 1997 with no intention of ever selling it. When the fashion director of Barneys New York approaches with an offer to buy the entire line, wholesale, the stubborn 20-year-old will not budge: Yes, his Gothic garments can go on display in the windows of the chic department store’s Manhattan flagship, but the sales floor? No.

His first collections are often referred to as ‘Gothic extravaganzas’.  “My first collection was made from sheets that my grandmother, who lived in Normandy, had been collecting for a long time”: Olivier tells later.  His cutting-edge vision quickly makes him one of the most acclaimed and respected designers of his generation.

(for 15 years  this ‘Melissa auf der Mauer wearing Olivier Theyskens’ picture hangs on my ‘inspiration-wall’)

One year later stylist Arianne Phillips sees photographs of his collection and dresses Madonna in his black silk satin coatdress for the Academy Awards and this brings his name to public attention.

Olivier Theyskens collection s/s 1999 (part 1 & 2)

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But without sufficient financial support, Olivier is forced to close his label in 2002. He begins costuming an opera for the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, but is soon recruited by Rochas, to become the houses’s new creative director.

For Rochas, Olivier designs collections inspired by “elements of lace, a Parisian couture approach, a femininity that is very intellectual and very beautiful but not that girly.”  His brief is to modernize the brand, making it more hip.

Debut collection Rochas  f/w 2003

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While Olivier’s dark aesthetic softens and gives a more romantic feel during his tenures at Rochas (and Nina Ricci), his approach is met with some criticism and is ultimately not sustainable. He is a champion of “demi- couture”—creating clothes for the retail market using techniques from the haute couture atelier. It is certainly an appealing concept, but hours of hand-stitching or embroidery drives the price of his pieces up and out of the range of his target customer. Olivier also takes a purer approach to fashion and doesn’t rely, like many fashion houses, on accessory sales for a reliable source of revenue. Olivier’s refusal to create a marketable accessories line, combined with the fact that he undermines the importance of advertising makes his position by Rochas very difficult.

In 2006 Rochas fashion division is discontinued by the line’s parent company, Proctor & Gamble, even though Olivier receives the CFDA International Award for his work at Rochas. A couple of months later he is appointed creative director at Nina Ricci.

Olivier’s first show for the House of Nina Ricci established him as being somewhat wiser in a business perspective. “He is now aware of the fact that fashion needs to address a younger, more casual level of dressing.” This is in stark contrast to the couture-like dresses he created for Rochas.

In March 2009, seven months before the end of his contract, Olivier is dimissed from Nina Ricci by the parent company, Puig.

Debut collection Nina Ricci a/w 2007

In 2010 Olivier designs the capsule collection for Theory (a Japanese owned, New York based company), which is loved by the public and is almost sold out (this rarely happens anymore in economical difficult times).

Olivier is appointed Artistic Director of the global Theory brand, as well as Head Designer of the Theyskens’ Theory collections. He’s also gaining creative control of everything from accessories to menswear. He has matured, and lessons had to been learned: “It’s about designing fashion that makes it more affordable, more accessible.” This brand allows him to offer a new point-of view on modern fashion.

Theyskens’ Theory is a worldwide succes.

http://theyskenstheory.com/

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Debut collection Theyskens Theory s/s 2011

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Here I am. That was the only line uttered by Veruschka—famous enough in 1966 to play herself—in her classic scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up. But here was a case where action—those three minutes of leggy writhing on the studio floor for David Hemmings’ Bailey-esque fashion photographer—truly spoke louder than words.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Veruschka changed ­fashion for good. She was the first superstar model of the Sixties. Her six-foot frame, with its improbably long limbs, was revolutionary, ­following as it did the more womanly shapes of the models that came before her.

When the director Antonioni came to London in 1965 to film Blow-Up, the fashion movie that defined the decade, he cast Veruschka as the model who cavorts in front of the lens of the ­character based on David Bailey.

The part was only a cameo, lasting no more than five minutes, but it made her a superstar. Slinking like a cat toying with a mouse—half-naked on the floor in a beaded dress—while the photographer shouted encouragement (“Give it to me! Give it to me! . . . Work, work, work!”), she was sixties sexuality incarnate.

Veruschka single-handedly started the trend to be super- thin; Twiggy burst on to the scene only once the film was in the can.

‘I was tall and I was thin. But just before shooting started I had been on a fashion assignment in Mexico and became terribly sick from drinking the water. I lost so much weight and was really ill and weak when I made the movie.’

Start of the super-thin trend: Veruschka admits she was too thin when she played a model who cavorts in front of the lens of the ­ it-fashion photographer in the film Blow Up. Dysentery. Not the most glamorous of muses for a new look.

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Veruschka’s scene in the film Blow Up has been voted the sexiest cinema moment in history

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Biography

Vera Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort or Veruschka von Lehndorff (born 14 May 1939 in Königsberg, East  Prussia, Russia) is a German model, actress, and artist who became popular during the 1960s. Known  professionally as Veruschka.

Vera’s father, Count von Lehndorff, is serving in the German army reserves when he witnesses Nazi atrocities in Balarus. The count takes part in the famous Operation Valkyrie plot to kill Adolf Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair. He is arrested the day after the conspirators’ bomb fails to kill the Führer.  “I have done this because I consider Hitler to be a murderer,” Von Lehndorff  tells the court at his trial. He is convicted and hanged. Vera and her sisters are separated from their mother and taken to a labor camp. “You will change your names and Hitler will educate you and you will never see your mother again,” the girls are told. Vera is five, her eldest sister seven.

In 1945 World War II ends in Europe. The von Lehndorff family is shattered, homeless, moving from place to place. Vera will attend thirteen different schools before studying at an art college in Hamburg.

Although she had grown up dreaming of becoming an artist, she moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ugo  Mulas and became a full-time model.

In 1961 Veruschka, a twenty-something, aspiring model who stood more than six feet tall, is still going by her given name, moves to New York City. Her modeling career fails to take off. She is unable to secure even one booking, despite having met Eileen Ford, head of powerful Ford Modeling Agency. After a brief sojourn in Europe, she brings a new, exotic name back to Manhattan: Veruschka. “I dressed all in black and went to see all the top photographers, like Irving Penn,” she will later say. “And [I] said, ‘I am Veruschka, who comes from the border between Russia, Germany, and Poland. I’d like to see what you can do with my face.’ ”Her audacity, and her exoticism, are entrancing.

The transformation did the trick: Soon, everyone was clamoring to work with her. Richard Avedon called her “the most beautiful woman in the world.” (Her boyfriend, the photographer Franco Rubartelli, was reported to be jealous)

 Richard Avedon & Veruschka

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Franco Rubartelli & Veruschka

For one landmark shoot, with Avedon and the fashion editor Polly Mellen, Veruschka spent three weeks in Japan, modeling exotic furs on icy peaks, on the slopes of a dormant volcano, and in a shogun’s shrine. “Fashion isn’t about being beautiful. It’s about never being forgotten once a photographer has seen you,” she once said.

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In 1963 she poses for Salvador Dalí as a living sculpture covered in shaving cream. Models for the first time in Vogue, in a fashion portfolio on the “new crepe chic” by Irving Penn. Called in for a meeting with Diana Vreeland. “She was charming and had a great  presence,” the Vogue editor in chief will later recall. “Her looks, of course, were superb.”

(Salvador Dalí & Veruschka)

In 1967 Veruschka is one of the highest-paid models in the world and she makes the cover of Life magazine. The accompanying feature is titled “Bizarre, Exotic, Six Feet Veruschka—The Girl Everybody Stares At.”

Grace Mirabella, the new editor of Vogue, brings her in to do a Paris collections portfolio in 1972. The makeup, however, takes five hours to apply—leaving the model exhausted by the time they are ready to shoot. “It absolutely showed in the pictures: They were dead; I had no expression,” she says. Mirabella and Condé Nast editorial director Alexander Liberman suggest she try a new look, “to cut my hair and be more like other models.” (Veruschka said about th disagreement, “Grace Mirabella wanted me to be bourgeois, and I didn’t want to be that”) Veruschka: “I said no. I realized it was no longer my moment. After that, I decided not to work in fashion again.”

Sensing that her moment had passed, Veruschka retired from modeling in 1975. She reverted to her given name and rediscovered her first passion: art. Working with Holger Trülzsch, a painter and sculptor, she collaborated on photographic self-portraits in which her camouflage body paint blended into the background; they were an “exploration of visibility and disappearance, a near-perfect but uncomfortable analogy for [her] own life,” according to Frieze magazine.

Her first photo book, Veruschka: Trans-Figurations—in collaboration with artist Holger Trülzsch—is published in 1986. In the arresting images, her body is painted to appear clothed.

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In October ’94, Veruschka makes a surprise runway appearance at the Chanel spring show in Paris (“looking sensational,” one reviewer says).And in 2002 “Veruschka Voyage” is the title of designer Michael Kors’s latest collection for French fashion house Céline.

In 2006  Veruschka appears as Gräfin von Wallenstein in latest Bond flick, Casino Royale.

Veruschka, a sumptuous $500 limited-edition coffee-table book, is published by Assouline. The foreword, by Richard Avedon, is reprinted from a May 1972 issue of Vogue.        

http://www.assouline.com/9782759402960.html

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Veruschka: ‘It has not been hard to grow older, because I believe if you have something you believe in that will keep you alive far more than plastic surgery or Botox. I know that there are many things I could do, but I’m not interested. It’s more important to be loving and to have a lively mind.’

Occasionally Veruschka still appears on catwalks.

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