| Page 7

Archive | 2015

Claude Montana, a Lost Legend & a Big Tradegy

This post is a tribute to my mother, who always inspired me to be myself. I gave her some hard times, dressing fashionably at a very young age, fashion she didn’t understand or like. But even when I walked around with three shoulder pads on top of each other (ultimate power dressing, ahum) and people were staring at me, she proudly walked next to me. Thanks mam for letting me find out who I am!

Claude Montana is a French fashion designer. His company, The House of Montana, founded in 1979, went bankrupt in 1997.

Born in Paris in 1949 to a Catalonian father and German mother, Montana began his career by designing papier-mâché jewelry covered with rhinestones. Later, he discovered leather and the complex techniques associated with it, eventually becoming a leading force in leather. His first fashion show took place in 1976. He was an avid colorist and favored blue, red, metallic, and neutral tones, in luxurious materials such as cashmere, leather and silk. He started his own company in 1979, and quickly became a darling of 1980s high fashion along with Thierry Mugler, who also favored aggressive shapes and strong colours.

In 1981, Montana designed his first collection for men, called Montana Hommes, in which he focused on the color and material of each garment rather than trivial details. From 1990 to 1992 he designed haute couture collections for the House of Lanvin, for which he received two consecutive Golden Thimble awards. Despite critical acclaim, Montana’s bold designs were financially disastrous for the house, created at a total estimated loss of $50 million, and he was ultimately replaced by Dominique Morlotti. In 1999, he designed an affordable line of clothing for women, Montana BLU. It was inspired by his favorite themes but modified to fit the style of sportswear and citywear.

Claude Montana for Lanvin, ph. Paolo Roversi

Montana’s fashion shows excelled in styling as well as in presentation. Because of their vibrations, modelling for Montana became prestigious and invitations to his shows the hottest tickets in town. With fashion’s return to harder lines in 2007 Montana has become an inspiration for many designers. Alexander McQueen praised and honored Montana many times in his collections. Both designers shared a love for construction and high quality.

On July 21, 1993, Montana married model Wallis Franken. It was a marriage of convenience and friendship, as Montana was openly homosexual. They were the same age, had been friends for 18 years, and she had served as his muse for many of his fashion innovations. Wallis already had two daughters and a granddaughter by a previous marriage. In June 1996, Wallis died after falling three stories from their Paris apartment. The death was ruled a suicide.

Power Dressing

In October 2010 it was announced that Claude Montana and Marielle Cro have been working on a coffee-table book documenting Montana’s career. The book includes photos and interviews with insiders who witnessed Montana’s career firsthand.

Currently, Montana lives in Spain.

Death of Wallis Franken

In the three years since she had married the hard-partying and openly gay Montana in a wedding that stunned even the normally blasé fashion world, Wallis Franken had endured terrible physical and emotional abuse from her complicated and unconventional husband. Friends had begged her to leave him, but she told them that she was “obsessed” with Montana. She had been his muse and his ally since he started out in the mid-70s, and she thought of him not only as a genius but also as her alter ego.

“He’s was sort of like her fate, her dark angel,” says Wallis’s friend Maxime de la Falaise. “She’d been in love with Claude for years.” Yet after decades of putting up with all the men and the nocturnal comings and goings in Montana’s life—not to mention his jealousy and possessiveness of her—the addition of the young fitting model, at a time when Wallis told friends Montana was ridiculing her as “old and ugly,” seemed particularly rattling. “Isn’t that weird?” she asked her friend Carolyn Schultz about the photographer’s request a few days before she returned to Paris from New York last May. But nobody, not even her family, seemed to have the slightest inkling of the depth of her despair. As usual, Wallis managed to fool everybody.

With her Louise Brooks bob, her lithe, androgynous body, and her raucous laugh, Wallis Franken was celebrated for her taste and style, but even more for her sparkling, care-free nature. To the sophisticates of Paris’s couture world, who knew her so well, she was never in a bad mood, but always warm, full of ideas, and ready for a good time. “She did not have the personality of a model but of a woman,” says designer Hervé Léger. “We do not find what she had in girls now. She became a real Parisienne. Even though we all know she didn’t have an easy time, I never saw her anxious or depressed. Wallis projected crème fraîche.

”Her heyday on the runway was in the 70s, before the era of the supermodel, when lucrative product-endorsement contracts were rare. But at 48 she remained a fixture on the fashion scene, still able to wow them last March at Montana’s show at the Institute of the Arab World on the Left Bank. “You could see her person—there was a vulnerability in those eyes. How many models actually reveal that?” says Mark Van Amringe of Details magazine’s Paris office. “Wallis was the first mannequin to give the impression that the image belonged to her, not to the couturier,” says Christian Lacroix’s business partner, Jean-Jacques Picart. “She became an international figure.”

In late April and early May, Wallis spent a wonderful two weeks in New York, tending to her aging mother, seeing old friends, buying gifts for Montana, and visiting a Chinese herbalist, to whom she recited a litany of menopausal symptoms. She told him, for example, that unstoppable tears would sometimes flow from her eyes, but she never mentioned the possibility of depression. She said she was excited that her daughter, Rhea, 26, who had two small daughters, was about to give birth to a grandson. “She left in very high spirits,” says Sanchez. Wallis made a date to meet Sanchez three weeks later at his house in Marrakech. Then she flew home, arriving on Monday morning, May 6.

1993 - Claude Montana & Wallis Franken fitting 4 the wedding

Claude Montana & Wallis Franken fitting for the wedding, 1993

She spent Tuesday at Montana’s boutique on Avenue Marceau, playing host to a German TV crew, choosing outfits for the young fitting model to pose in, treating the visitors to jokes and champagne. Her younger daughter, Celia, 24, who worked at the boutique, was also on hand to help out. “She smiled a lot and talked to everybody,” says the TV producer, Alexandra von Schledorn. She and Montana were polite and careful with each other.

Nobody saw her on Wednesday, yet it was not unusual for her to take to her bed for 24 hours at a time. Neighbors who had previously complained to the police of loud music and rows emanating from Montana’s apartment on the Rue de Lille in the chic Seventh Arrondissement didn’t bother to look out to the back courtyard in the early morning hours when they heard a kind of thump. It wasn’t until seven hours later, on Thursday, May 9, that Wallis Franken’s bloodied body was discovered splattered on the cobblestones. She was wearing black leggings, socks, and a white shirt that was torn—a detail reportedly of interest to the Paris police.

The concierge could not even tell who she was. She had apparently taken a swan dive out the second-story kitchen window, a drop of 25 feet. The police, who woke Montana to make the identification, questioned him for hours. They found her jewelry lined up neatly on the kitchen table. Montana apparently told the police as well as Wallis’s family that he had felt a draft during the night and had closed the kitchen window, but had not looked outside. He said the last time he saw Wallis alive was in the wee hours of Wednesday, May 8, when she fell asleep on the living-room sofa. By the time he left for work that day, she had moved to her own room, or so he assumed. He did not check. Nor did he bother to look in on her Wednesday night when he returned.

The body was not removed from the courtyard until midafternoon. After an autopsy, which showed no marks or signs of self-defense on her body but which did show that she had ingested alcohol and cocaine, the French authorities have officially ruled Wallis Franken’s death a suicide by defenestration. Her family accepts that verdict. Nevertheless, her older brother Randy, who lives in Germany, and her mother, who lives in New York, both gave statements to the French police. They also engaged a lawyer who, according to Randy Franken, “made clear to authorities that there was a history of abuse.”

What convinced Randy that his sister took her own life, however, was the height of the kitchen window. “I’m six foot three, and the sill hits me at my chest. If you wanted to push someone out, it would be a real job.” But these facts have not stopped the distraught and incredulous friends of Wallis Franken from blaming the diminutive Claude Montana for contributing to her death. (He, in turn, has made no public statement of any kind about his wife or her death. Neither has his press office. He declined to speak to Vanity Fair.)

‘I feel that no matter what Claude did, whether his hands were on her or not, the lifestyle he gave her, the way he abused her mentally, emotionally, physically, pushed her over the edge,” says Wallis’s closest friend, former model turned painter Tracey Weed. “I have no doubt that he was a contributing factor to my sister’s demise, perhaps a major contributing factor,” says Randy Franken. “We all have the same idea,” echoes painter Vincent Scali, Wallis’s witness at her marriage to Montana. “Everybody knew that his part in her death was enormous.” How did Montana contribute? “By treating her like shit, saying, ‘You’re no one, you’re nobody, you’re a weight on my life.’ … He knew Wallis was weak.… We did everything in our power to keep her away from him, and she went back. She was a masochist.”

Book

Displays and revels in the rich inventiveness of a designer who played a key role in the fashions of the 1980s and 1990s, and who has become an inspiration for many contemporary designers.

The Montana woman embodied an extraordinary new image: razor- sharp tailoring and strong silhouettes with dramatic proportions and masculine lines, enlivened by an astonishing mix of detail and bold hues. Materials, colors, and cut were all vehicles for Claude Montana’s effervescent genius, and it was the Lanvin period in the early 1990s that marked the absolute high point of his creativity.

This book looks at the principles and practices that underpin Montana’s work. It records numerous conversations with Montana himself that help us to understand the essential forces that have shaped his work, while scores of catwalk images and reproductions of his sketches reveal the energy and singularity of his vision. It is a journey punctuated with intimate comments and observations by those who have accompanied the designer at different points along the way—among others, the photographers Dominique Issermann, Tyen, and Paolo Roversi; the embroiderer François Lesage; the designer Alain Mikli; and the makeup artist Olivier Echaudemaison. Their moving testimonies are scattered throughout these pages. 124 color and 22 black-and-white illustrations.

ISBN 9780500515396

Info: Wikipedia, http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1996/09/montana199609

Comments 7 Comments
Categories biography

God and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano

24 May

Young John Galliano at the right

Young Lee Alexander McQueen (ph. not in the book)

Dana Thomas, an American fashion journalist based in Paris, seems to have no qualms about the former, presumably in search of the latter. She publishes her latest work, luridly labelled God and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, to neatly coincide with not only the anniversary of McQueen’s suicide, but also the launch of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition, Savage Beauty, a British incarnation of the blockbuster show originally staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That exhibition was the most successful of the museum’s annual Costume Institute shows (some 650,000 people passed through its doors), becoming one of the eight most-visited exhibits ever in the august institution’s 145-year history. The V&A has already experienced record-breaking advance ticket sales: over 30,000 have already shifted. The number is only set to rise.

What does that indicate? An enthusiasm for McQueen’s clothes, certainly – motivated by a number of factors. Not least of which is a morbid fascination with the recently departed. As for Galliano? His spectacular fall from grace has proved tabloid front-page fodder over the past four years. His rehabilitation and return to the fashion fold has been dissected by broadsheets and red-tops, outside the usual limits of said publications’ fashion pages. Why not capitalise on the curiosity surrounding both, and spuriously compare the two? I say spurious because, despite both coming from working-class London backgrounds and being educated at Central Saint Martins, there is little to connect the work of Galliano and McQueen. Galliano was raised in Gibraltar before his parents moved to London, McQueen born and bred in the city’s East End. Galliano graduated in 1984, McQueen 1992. And while the theatricality of their visions may seem to share a common thread of inspiration, Galliano was consistently more romantic and sensual, McQueen savage and macabre.

John Galliano

All that, of course, is incidental. The important part isn’t drawing illuminating connections between McQueen and Galliano’s life and work, the parallels in their rise to the top of the fashion game without high-born advantages. Rather, Thomas’s book is about the salacious Schadenfreude she and her readers can enjoy at their mutual downfall. I feel there is a callousness to Thomas’s telling of the tales of these two designers, unpicking their shortcomings, their personal demons, their failures, and exposing the unravelling seams of their lives and work for all to see. Galliano, she tells us, was a man whose best work was behind him by 1994 – almost 20 years before his downfall. McQueen was his technical superior, but a man enslaved by his carnal needs. She gleefully recalls an assistant being advised that her job would involve washing McQueen’s sex toys – the Marquis de Sade meeting the surreal entitlement of the fashion world as depicted in The Devil Wears Prada.

Alexander McQueen behind the scenes (ph. not in the book)

That book was a bitchy, brittle and thinly veiled roman à clef. Thomas’s characters in Gods and Kings are real, but there’s the same feeling. She seems determined to undermine not only the legacy of McQueen and Galliano, but the entire fashion world, to prick its entitled, elitist bubble and expose that it’s nothing but hot air. Despite the fact that, as her website declares, Thomas has worked in fashion for over 20 years, beginning her career on the style section of The Washington Post and working as a cultural and fashion correspondent for Newsweek in Paris from 1995 to 2011, she seems to have no affection or affinity for the industry. Her last book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre (2007), ripped open the world of hyper-luxe handbag manufacturing, exposing the conspiracy of high-fashion conglomerates keeping prices soaring ever-higher whilst cutting on manufacturing costs. Deluxe was pithy and pitch-perfect, the perfect debunking of the contemporary fashion myth. Thomas crowned the French fashion house Hermès – whose made-to-order handbags retail for upwards of £5,000 – as the embodiment of true luxury. Her disdain for Louis Vuitton (whose parent company, LVMH, own both the house of Christian Dior and 91 per cent of the John Galliano label) is absolute.

John Galliano & Annabelle Neilson

John Galliano at the catwalk after Dior Couture show s/s 2007

I am a fan of Deluxe, of Thomas taking the faceless conglomerates to task for their commodification of luxury. It won’t make any difference to their sales figures – neither did a 2010 ruling by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority that two of the brand’s print adverts, depicting artisans hand-sewing Vuitton handbags, were “misleading”: “Consumers would interpret the image of a woman using a needle and thread… to mean that Louis Vuitton bags were hand-stitched.”

But I am not a fan of Gods and Kings. I doubt many in the fashion industry will be. Not because the line between biography and hagiography is especially blurred when it comes to fashion (although that is undoubtedly true) but because the fashion industry interacts with John Galliano and Alexander McQueen as three-dimensional people, not two dimensional labels. Thomas does, too.

Alexander McQueen & his beloved Mum Joyce McQueen, 2004

Alexander McQueen & Isabella Blow

Gods and Kings is one of those odd books that makes you wonder why the author wrote it, so obviously does she loathe her subject matter. You also wonder what she said to urge McQueen and, to a lesser extent, Galliano’s confidants, to share their secrets and rip apart their legacies. There is a vengeful, spiteful tone to this book, redolent of the unpleasant sniping and gossiping that is, alas, endemic in the fashion industry. Thomas closes with a chapter plucking at the heartstrings and bemoaning the demise of true creativity in fashion. “There is no poetry,” she muses. “No heart. No angst. It’s just business.” Maybe that’s how she justifies this sullying, sneering, muck-smearing book to herself, alone, late at night. I hurled this book away from me. I urge you to do the same.

Alexander Fury (independent.co.uk)

John Galliano

Alexander McQueen

info: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/gods-and-kings-by-dana-thomas-book-review-exposing-the-seams-cruelly-10011203.html

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Uncategorized

Sarah Andelman, founder of the Coolest style-design-art-food Concept Store in the World

17 May

Fashion is not just about clothing or shoes, it is also about creativity, art, music and everything relating to life. Colette concept store founders, Sarah Andelman (former art student and Purple magazine intern) & her mother Colette Roussaux, after whom the store is named, understood this and made it happen by opening the now fashion institution in 1997.

The store quickly became renowned for its revolutionary approach to retail, such as its weekly product updates and in-store restaurant and mineral water-bar.

Colette, located on Rue Saint Honoré, is famed for its well judged fashion edits and quirky mix of lifestyle products that have turned the store into one of Paris’ premiere fashion pit-stops. Probably, the best thing about Colette is that it uses its great marketing force to promote young talents. Creative, young designers and artists, with revolutionary ideas and passionate about their work, who also engage humor in the creation process. It was one of the first to stock collections by Proenza Schouler, Mary Katrantzou, Rodarte, Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders, Raf Simons and Thom Browne.

Colette Roussaux & Sarah Andelman

Colette’s creative director Sarah Andelman also pioneered the idea of designer collaborations; she’s persuaded Hermès to create special Colette scarves, Burberry to design a trench-coat with a Swarovski-studded collar, Lanvin X Balmain Batman t-shirts and a selection of candy-floss flavoured macarons by iconic French bakery Ladurée.

The Parisian store has inspired cult concept stores around the world, but has been one step ahead of its competitors.

Hedi Slimane was not amused

Saint laurent pulled a large amount of merchandise from Colette, ending a 15-year relationship.

The reason? The French fashion house was offended by the boutique’s 300-item stock of parody T-shirts that display the slogan, “Ain’t Laurent Without Yves” (a reference to designer Hedi Simane’s controversial move to rebrand the womenswear line immediately after joining the company, Yves Saint Laurent became Saint Laurent).

Hedi Slimani

In a more symbolic gesture, Saint Laurent rescinded creative director and retail manager Sarah Andelman’s invitation to the label’s Spring 2014 runway show.

Separately, the publisher for Document, an independent magazine, contacted Andelman to cancel a forrthcoming event, informing her that the store could no longer carry the publication because one of its covers was photographed by Slimane.

Considering the Saint Laurent designer’s fascination with youth and subcultures, it’s surprising that Slimane is so hostile to this vein of satirical streetwear — a growing trend which hinges on pop culture’s infatuation with high-end fashion. WWD notes that Colette carries other items which parody prestige brands like Céline, Hermès and Karl Lagerfeld. These parody pieces are displayed on another floor, separate from the designer wares.

YSL would not comment on the story, telling that the company’s dealings with retailers are confidential. .

INTERVIEW Magazine

interviewed Sarah Andelman, Januari 2013

INTERVIEW: What was the impetus for opening Colette? How did you define the concept of the shop in the beginning?

SARAH ANDELMAN: It was all about the venue itself. We lived in the same building, and the space was empty for many years. One day we visited it, and we immediately had the vision to create a new place—with the restaurant, the gallery, fashion, beauty, design, music, etc. So we didn’t have the concept and then look for a space—we had the space, and how to fill it was very clear. We deeply feel Parisian, and knew what Paris was missing. There wasn’t one specific shop that influenced us—it was more a frustration about certain products that we couldn’t find in Paris that motivated us. Our vision hasn’t changed since. We’re still excited to discover new products, new brands, and to mix them all together. The shop itself, in its structure and the selection, changes all the time, but the original challenge is the same. From the beginning, the customers were always a mix—neighbors and tourists, fashion victims or hi-tech fanatics . . .

Colette’s Thierry Mugler window

INTERVIEW: How do you go about curating the store? What’s the process?

ANDELMAN: It’s never about “commerce,” but just coups de foudre. The edit is done very spontaneously, following our instincts. We try to balance the products of the season with timeless pieces, young, new designers and major brands. We’ve carried young designers since our opening, and it has always been natural for us to support and give space to show their talent. We’ve worked since their very first collections with Jeremy Scott, Raf Simons, Proenza Schouler, Rodarte, Mary Katrantzou, Sacai, Simone Rocha, Christopher Kane, Olympia Le Tan . . . Fashion is very important, but we also considered that it was not only about fashion but many other medias around it. We’ve done so many great collaborations on products, from Moon Boots to Nike sneakers, Ladurée macaroons, and Vespa scooters, and in the gallery, had so many fabulous artists, photographers, and illustrators appear on our walls. So I never ask myself what people expect to find at Colette—I just hope to surprise them with something they can’t resist buying.

Adidas & Colette colaboration

INTERVIEW: While some other stores have opened up new outposts in other cities and countries, you’ve stuck to the single storefront on Rue Saint-Honoré. Does that kind of expansion interest you?

ANDELMAN: We’re not interested in opening Colette in other cities—it’s all about the location, and we prefer to keep it unique and fresh. We’ve loved the pop-up shops that we’ve done with Comme des Garçons in Tokyo, Gap in New York City, or, more recently, Chanel in Paris. We’re also very proud of our collaboration with Hermès. We started to work with some international artists, brands, and generated our own community over the years. We’ll soon be launching a new version of our e-shop with more facilities, and it’s already become a great window for us to reach consumers around the worldl. Now you can find everything online, so I suppose shopping is maybe sometimes just repérage, even if we don’t really feel it at Colette. I think people are more curious and open to something they don’t know yet . . .

Colette’s colaboration with Chanel

INTERVIEW: What do you think is the future of shopping?

ANDELMAN: I hope they’ll develop a “buy” button on Instagram. I think the act of shopping will be quicker and quicker, like when we buy a song on iTunes. It can be a disaster for your wallet, but so good for ours.

Tommy Hilfigger meets Keith Haring at Colette

Website: http://www.colette.fr/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/www.colette.fr

Twitter: https://twitter.com/coletteparis

Philippe & Sarah Andelman and Colette Roussaux

info:

http://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/sarah-andelman

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/the-curators-sarah-andelman

Comments Leave a Comment
Categories inspiration

Elio Fiorucci, New York Store became known as the “Daytime Studio 54”

10 May

Elio Fiorucci, ph. by Giarcarlo Mecarelli

Elio Fiorucci was born in Milan on 10 June 1935, son of a shoe shop owner. One day in 1962, Elio came up with the idea of making galoshes (rubber overshoes) in bright primary colours while working at his father’s shop. When they were featured in a local weekly fashion magazine, the galoshes caused a sensation (inspiration for Prada shoes fall 2012). Following a trip to London in 1965, Elio was determined to bring Carnaby Street fashions to Milan. He opened his first shop on Galleria Passerella in Milan on 31 May 1967 selling clothes by London designers such as Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes.

In 1968 Fiorucci looked East for inspiration, buying cheap T-shirts from India, and turning rice sacks into bags. Two years later the company set up its own manufacturing plant, and adopted the “two angels” logo created by Italo Lupi.

Andy Warhol chose the shop window to launch of his revolutionary “Interview” magazine.

“Went to Fiorucci and it’s so much fun there. It’s everything I’ve always wanted, all plastic.”

12/21/83 Warhol diary entry
.

In 1974 the company opened a huge new store on Via Torino in Milan, expanding beyond fashion to offer books, furniture and music. The new shop also had a performance area, vintage clothing market and restaurant. Meanwhile the label introduced the monokini and thong from Brazil, causing controversy with the topless photos used to advertise them. Glass beads from New Mexico were another hit In 1975 the company opened its first store overseas, on the Kings Road in London, and launched a children’s collection called Fioruccino. It brought Afghan coats to the mass market and popularised the leopard-skin prints first created by Elsa Schiaparelli two decades before.

Fiorucci controversial monokini ad

The real epicenter of Fiorucci’s cool was its New York store at 125 East 59th Street. Opening in the spring of 1976, it soon became a destination for all those young and weird. The press compared its atmosphere to that of Studio 54. In 1977, New York magazine would declare: “All it took this year to achieve instant chic, day or night, at the slickest New York party or the trashiest was a pair of $110 gold cowboy boots from Fiorucci.” Customers such as Marc Jacobs, Cher and Terence Conran would rub shoulders with Jackie Onassis and Lauren Bacall, you might see drag queen Joey Arias serving the King of Spain or author Douglas Coupland absorbing the store’s pop culture or Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt buying some jeans.

Oliviero Toscani for Fiorucci

Fiorucci served free espresso during the ’70s before most Americans had even heard of it. Fiorucci had DJ’s in the boutique spinning all the latest cutting edge music, B-52’s, David Bowie, Blondie, Lena Lovich, Kate Bush. Fiorucci had models dancing in its window displays, wearing the latest fashions. Fiorucci was “cool”. Out with the old in with the new. Fiorucci had 30 stylists and trend- spotters, some as young as 16, whose job was to fly around the globe and report back on the latest trends. They would buy samples of things they saw on the street. They’d go to clubs and see what people were wearing. They would get the youngest, and best looking sales assistants, dress them up in the most outrageous outfits, and have them “sell” Fiorucci, on the streets. Look at this fabulous plastic skirt I got at Fiorucci. etc….

Fiorucci Art Direction by Maripol

In the early 1980s the Fiorucci art director was jewelry designer Maripol, known for creating Madonna’s look at the time. Other employees included Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone, Terry Jones of i-D magazine, Oliviero Toscani, who shot many of the famous Benetton ads and famed interior designer Jim Walrod.

Meanwhile, the company continued to bring new products to market, including a collection made from DuPont’s new Tyvek fabric and velvet slippers from China. In 1978 they were the first fashion house to license their name for a collection of sunglasses, while in 1981 a Disney licence led to a highly successful range of clothes emblazoned with Mickey Mouse. Ever on the pulse of the times, Fiorucci sponsored the reunion of Simon and Garfunkel in The Concert in Central Park on 19 September 1981, attended by 400,000 people or more and on the bill for their birthday party in 1983 was a then-unknown Madonna.

Madonna and her dancers, the 15th anniversary of Fiorucci at Studio 54, 1983

In 1981 the company launched the first stretch jeans with Lycra, and the success of the 5-pocket “Safety” jeans was recognised three years later in a licensing deal with Wrangler Jeans.

Jeans put Fiorucci onto the international fashion scene. Fiorucci created vinyl jeans that were skintight, sexy, and brightly colored. Fiorucci was crazy for color — shocking, screaming, pulsating fluorescent shades — at a time when others were proposing muted preppie plaids. Fiorucci sold sex, before the concept was coopted by mainstream media.

In 1987 Fiorucci produced the Junior Gaultier line designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, and in 1989 they went back to their roots with a deal with Vivienne Westwood, queen of the London street scene.

The company expanded rapidly after 1978, launching new stores across the US, Europe and Asia. Despite thriving sales, the company was dogged by poor management and had to close the New York store in 1986; Betsey Johnson has suggested “Fiorucci was the most happening place. It never stopped being happening — it just left New York City, because I don’t think New York City was happening enough by the mid-80’s”. Fiorucci closed down the rest of the US retail locations in 1988 after a franchise dispute, moving instead to a wholesale strategy.

Fiorucci logo by Italo Lupi

Fiorucci label tag

The company was sold and resold again. January 1996 after a plea bargain, Elio Fiorucci was given a suspended jail sentence of 22 months for inflating the value of invoices to increase the value of the company to Carrera at the expense of his creditors.

In 1999 the then owners announced a plan to open a New York store once again. The initial plan was to open in time for Christmas 1999, but the store on lower Broadway finally opened its doors in June 2001. Critics were sceptical that it could recapture the buzz of times past, given the increased competition in mass-market clubbing gear from the likes of H&M and The Limited.

Meanwhile the brand continued to thrive in Europe and regained some of its former notoriety in 1995 with a poster campaign for its jeans featuring a naked woman’s buttocks and pink furry handcuffs, which became instant bestsellers. In 1999 it launched a successful perfume, followed by a second, Fiorucci Loves You, in 2001, and “Miss Fiorucci” makeup in 2003.

Although Elio Fiorucci retained creative control during this era, the owners are protective of the Fiorucci trademarks and have taken legal action against H&M in the US when Elio designed their Poolside line. He has also set up a brand of his own called Love Therapy and designed for Agent Provocateur.

In March 2003, Elio Fiorucci announced that after 36 years, he was closing the doors to his historic shop in Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, Milan. When Fiorucci hit the scene nearly 40 years ago, he blew Italy – and the rest of the world – away with a larger-than-life attitude. He brought in the new and unexpected, pre-dating the surge of today’s “lifestyle” stores. Fiorucci mixed clothing with beauty products, vintage items, music and home furnishings. He even used his retail space for artistic performances. Elio said the reason he was closing his shop was because he had “fallen out of love” with fashion.

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore patches up several videos of young people dancing, singing and partying. It starts with the disco scene of the 1970s, touches upon the Northern Soul of the late 1970s and early 1980s and climaxes with the rave scene of the 1990s. Mash-ups of a single soundtrack play during the whole video, giving a sense of unity and narrative to the video. However, there are moments of spoken text. At one point an animated element – a bird tattoo image – appears as if released from the hand of a dancer, then carried into the next shot finds its place on the arm of another of the film’s nightclubbing subjects. Some dance moves are played on loop for a few seconds, some are played in slow motion.

Inspired by Elio Fiorucci

coloured galoshes : http://www.swims.com/MEN/Galoshes.aspx

Info:

Wikipedia,

http://www.thedollsfactory.com/2010/07/fiorucci-provocative-genius.html#.VUUM8Pntmko

article by By Trish Donnally, Chronicle Fashion Editor

Comments 3 Comments
Categories biography

Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s Milliner, Influences today’s Fashion

3 May

Rose Bertin

Rose Bertin was born Marie-Jeanne Bertin (1747-1813) in Abbeville, a textile town in France. Her family was not wealthy and so she was apprenticed to a marchande de modes (fashion merchant) at a young age. By 1772 she had worked her way up to the exclusive rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, where she opened her own shop under the name of Le Grand Mogol. She quickly won the patronage of several influential courtiers (ladies who lived at the court), including the duchess of Chartres, who introduced Bertin to the newly crowned queen, Marie Antoinette, in the summer of 1774.

The queen of France quickly became Bertin’s most famous customer. Twice a week, soon after Louis XVI’s coronation, Bertin would present her newest creations to the young queen and spend hours discussing them. The Queen adored her wardrobe and was passionate about every detail and Bertin, as her milliner, became her confidante and friend.

Dress designed by Rose Bertin and worn by Marie Antoinette

In addition to Marie Antoinette, Bertin dressed the queens of Spain, Sweden and Portugal, Grand-Duchess Maria-Fëdorovna of Russia and many European aristocrats. Indeed, Rose Bertin was the first “fashion designer” to become a celebrity in her own right. She is widely credited with having brought fashion and haute couture to the forefront of popular culture.

Marie Antoinette would buy nearly 300 dresses annually (not all by Bertin ofcourse) and never wore anything twice. To satisfy her extravagant demands, there was also her personal coiffeur Léonard Autié, who launched the poufs, elaborate hairstyles that adorned the majestic royal locks. Marie Antoinette became a fashion icon (before fashion icons were called fashion icons, that is) and not only in her own kingdom.

Ph. Steven Meisel, hair Julian d’Ys

Working with Léonard , Bertin created a coiffure that became the rage all over Europe: hair would be accessorized, stylized, cut into defining scenes and modeled into shapes and objects—ranging from recent gossip to nativities to husbands’ infidelities, to French naval vessels such as the Belle Poule, to the pouf aux insurgents in honor of the American Revolutionary War. The Queen’s most famous coif was the “inoculation” pouf that she wore to publicize her success in persuading the King to be vaccinated against smallpox.

Marie Antoinette also asked Bertin to dress dolls in the latest fashions as gifts for her sisters and her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. Bertin’s fashion dolls were called “Pandores” and were made of wax over jointed wood armatures or porcelain. There were small ones the size of a common toy doll, or large ones as big or half as big as a real person, petites Pandores and grandes Pandores. Fashion dolls as courriers of modes remained in vogue until the appearance of Fashion magazines.

When the marchandes de modes of Paris were incorporated in 1776, Bertin was elected as the guild’s first mistress. In this post, she earned the right to dress the life-sized fashion doll that toured the mercantile centers of Europe and beyond, advertising French fashions. By 1778 Bertin had grown so powerful at court that the press dubbed her France’s ministre des modes, or “minister of fashion.” The unofficial title underlined Bertin’s position as a trusted royal adviser as well as a representative of France to other nations.

Bertin’s partnership with the queen ensured her success, but it would also prove to be her undoing. As Marie Antoinette’s popularity waxed and waned, so did that of her favorite minister. Courtiers were outraged by Bertin’s privileged place in the royal circle, unprecedented for a commoner. Furthermore, her success at court gave her an ego of princely proportions. Soon Bertin was as famous for her arrogance and astronomical prices as she was for her fashions and celebrity clients. Previously, labor had represented only a fraction of the cost of a garment. By demanding star status and a star’s salary, Bertin helped elevate fashion from a trade to an art.

The outbreak of the French Revolution forced hundreds of fashion workers out of business or out of the country. With her ties to queen and court, Bertin had every reason to fear for her life. The aristocracy saw Bertin as an upstart and an interloper, to the revolutionaries she was no better than an aristocrat herself. Royalists and Republicans alike blamed Bertin for encouraging Marie Antoinette’s excesses. While people were dying of starvation, numerous pamphlets denounced Rose Bertin as a “corrupt and corrupting maker of luxury goods”.

Grande Pandore; half as big as a real person

The last outfit worn by the queen during her transfer to the Conciergerie prison were made by “Le Grand Mogol”. During the queen’s imprisonment, Bertin continued to receive orders from her former prized customer, for much smaller, almost negligible, orders of ribbons and simple alterations. She was to provide the former queen’s mourning outfit following the execution of Louis XVI, recalling a dream that Marie Antoinette had years before of her favorite milliner handing her ribbons that all turned to black.

Bertin fled Paris in 1792 and spent the next three years in such Émigré havens as Brussels, Frankfurt, and London, where she continued to dress fashionable foreigners and French exiles. Unlike her royal muse, Bertin managed to survive the French Revolution unscathed.

By the time Bertin returned to Paris, she was out of danger but also out of fashion. She could still count a few English, Russian, and Spanish aristocrats among her clients, but hardly any Frenchwomen. Indeed, many of her French clients had perished on the scaffold, leaving their bills unpaid. The Revolution cut her career short and Rose Bertin had long been forgotten when she died on 22 September 1813.

Rose Bertin’s influence on today’s Fashion Designers

Vivienne Westwood

Christian Lacroix

Vivienne Westwood

Pierre Balmain

Christian Lacroix

Dior

Vivienne Westwood

Thierry Mugler

Rochas

Dior

Thierry Mugler

Rochas by Olivier Theyskens

info: http://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/fashion-clothing-industry/fashion-designers/rose-bertin, Wikipedia & https://stripesandvelvet.wordpress.com/author/irinacalina/

Comments 7 Comments
Categories inspiration

← Older Entries

Newer Entries →

Search