Watching photographs of Jerry Hall in the book Antonio Lopez: Art, Sex & Disco a memory popped in my head: when I was fifteen, I covered my bedroom with her magazine covers and fashion pictures. Those days Jerry was the it girl. After a while I’d gathered lots of pictures in which the main colour was blue (blue sky, blue bathing suit, blue dress or blue eye make-up) and I decorated a whole wall with them. (I was already a very stylish girl) The Vogue cover underneath was in the centre of my ‘Blue Jerry Hall Wall’. I assume Jerry Hall was my first muse….

Jerry Faye Hall and her twin sister Terry were born on July 2, 1956 in Gonzales, Texas. Still young she attended the Kim Dawson Modeling Agency and at sixteen, she used the insurance money she received following a car accident, to move to France (with a suitcase full of Frederick’s Of Hollywood knockoffs made by her mum).

Jerry was staying at the French Riviera, when she was discovered sunbathing on a Saint Tropez beach by fashion agent Claude Haddad. Soon she moved to Paris where she shared an appartement with Grace Jones, who was also pursuing a modeling career. Together Jerry and Grace immersed themselves in the Parisian nightlife, often performing risqué cabaret acts in clubs and at parties. In famous Club Sept Jerry mesmerized fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez , who immediately started working with her.

 

To Antonio Lopez, Jerry was the personification of his illustrations and with the changes he made in her appearance, she became the model everybody wanted to work with. It wasn’t the first time, Antonio had discovered and transformed a girl into a sought-after model. Jerry moved in with Antonio. She fell in love with him and because he didn’t want to lose her to another illustrator or photographer they got engaged. They were the couple everybody wanted to be acquainted with. The engagement only lasted  a few months.

Jerry Hall’s first fashion show was Yves Saint Laurent at which she wore his famous tuxedo and her first photographer was Helmut Newton. Her modeling career took off instantly. At nineteen she appeared on the cover of Roxy Music’s album Siren. Five months later, lead singer Bryan Ferry gave her an engagement ring, Jerry was 19 and Bryan Ferry 30. She also appeared in the video for his solo hit ‘Let’s Stick Together’. By 1977 Jerry had been on forty magazine covers including Italian Vogue and made thousands of dollars a week. She was the face of Yves saint Laurent Opium perfume and Revlon cosmetics.

Jerry Hall and Bryan Ferry were the coolest couple in London and invited everywhere, including to dinner by Mick Jagger. Bryan saw that Mick was smitten with Jerry and at the end of the evening Mick brushed his leg next to hers. “I felt an electric jolt!”, Jerry remembers. Mick Jagger began turning up regularly at the home Jerry and Bryan shared. One night, while Bryan was on tour, Jerry was seated between Jagger and Warren Beatty at a dinner in New York City. “It was May 21, 1977… We would celebrate that day for the next 23 years”, Jerry wrote in her biography. They began an affair.

When Bryan Ferry’s tour ended later that summer, he took Jerry with him to Los Angeles, but Jagger was relentless. When Jerry saw Mick again in Paris, she knew she wanted to be with him. Not much later Jerry and Bryan Ferry ended things and she was free to move in with Jagger. She tried not to worry about the small detail that Mick was technically married to Bianca. On a David Letterman show she famously said:”My mother taught me, the way to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. I said I’d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit myself.”

Jerry and Mick became regulars at their favorite nightspot Studio 54. “It was wonderful. You’d see Martha Graham, Rudolf Nureyev, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Elisabeth Taylor’.

The couple finally married on Bali, Indonesia, and had four children. For many years Jerry was plagued with doubts about the relationship, “Mick was a dangerous sexual predator and I felt very unsure of him. I had weaned him off drugs, but they had been replaced by sex… By the time we had children, I would read about Mick’s dalliances in the newspapers.” Two years after the birth of their fourth child, Brazilian model Luciana Morad announced she was pregnant by Mick, Jerry filed for divorce. Mick claimed their Hindu beach wedding wasn’t valid under English law. The relationship ended after 23 years.

Jerry Hall, The Supermodel

Jerry Hall  The Icon

Marc Jacobs was inspired by the Jerry Hall-look for his S/S collection 2011

Steven Meisel was inspired by Jerry Hall & Antonio Lopez for the ’High Gloss’ story in Vogue Italia december 2012

I end this post with a picture that could have been part of my ‘Blue Jerry Hall Wall’……

Dressed as Joan of Arc in costume armour with a  chain mail headdress, it was a typically dramatic picture of Isabella Blow and  as part of a prestigious feature on British fashion icons in Vanity Fair  magazine, it should have been one of the crowning glories of a legendary career.

Isabella Delves Broughton (Issie) was born 19 November 1958  in Marylebone, London. Isabella had two sisters, Julia and Lavinia, and a brother, John, who drowned in the family’s swimming pool at the age of two. In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother left the household, bidding each daughter farewell with a handshake. Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which was worth more than one million pounds.

Isabella Blow……I‘ve done the most peculiar jobs. I was working in a scone shop for years, selling apricot-studded scones. I was a cleaner in London for two years. I wore a handkerchief with knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in the post office and said, What are you doing? I said, What do you think I look like I’m doing? I’m a cleaner!

In 1979 Isabella moved to New York to study Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University and shared a flat with the actress Catherine Oxenberg. A year later she moved to Texas and worked for Guy Laroche. In 1981, Issie married her first husband, Nicholas Taylor (whom she divorced in 1983), and was introduced to the fashion director of American Vogue, Anna Wintour. She was hired initially as Wintour’s assistant, but it was not long before she was assisting Andre Leon Talley, now Vogue’s editor-at-large. While working in New York, she befriended Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both ended up doing assignments for Vogue as a result of  Issie’s introductions.

In 1986, Isabella Blow returned to London and worked for fashion director Michael Roberts (Tatler and the Sunday Times Style magazine). Two years later she married her second husband, art dealer Detmar Hamilton Blow (he is a grandson and namesake of the early 20th-century society architect Detmar Blow). Milliner Philip Treacy designed the bride’s wedding headdress and a now-famous fashion relationship was forged.

Why  the hats? ‘ ….to keep everyone away from me. They say, Oh, can I kiss you?  I say, No, thank you very much. That’s why I’ve worn the hat. Goodbye. I don’t want to be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I love.

In 1993, Isabella worked with photographer Steven Meisel producing the Babes in London shoot featuring Stella Tennant, Plum Sykes, Bella Freud and Honor Fraser. Isabella had a natural sense of style and a good feeling for future fashion directions. Spotting Sophie Dahl, she described Dahl as “a blow up doll with brains”, and launched the model’s career. During the Babes shoot, Issie told Stella Tennant, ‘If I  make you famous, I want a bottle of my favourite perfume.’ A bottle of Fracas duly arrived. 

Isabella Blow & Alexander McQueen

Detmar Blow……One of the main reasons my wife became the fashion icon she did was because of her passion for combing the streets in her endless quest for new designers. And her biggest discovery was undoubtedly the incredible talent of Alexander McQueen. I clearly recall how she returned home in London’s Pimlico one evening in  June 1992, enraptured by the graduate show of a 23-year-old student from Central  St Martins College of Art and Design. There had been no seats left, so Issie simply sat on the stairs and watched  the clothes go past her. The student’s name was Lee Alexander McQueen. ‘Det, his clothes move like birds,’ she told me. ‘He can cut material like a god.’ From that very first moment, Issie, who was 33, knew that here was a fashion  genius, the likes of which are seen just once in a lifetime.

Isabella bought his entire postgraduate collection, which he presented to her in a binbag, for £5,000, paying in weekly installments of £100, and made herself part of his world. She introduced her favourite milliner to her favourite fashion designer, and the two have collaborated ever since. ‘They both love birds,‘ she explains.

Detmar Blow, recalls the deep bond that united the designer and his muse. I first met Alexander when Isabella invited him to live with us at 67 Elizabeth Street in Belgravia. We were on the top floor, Philip Treacy on the first, and Alexander was on the ground. Issie was working at British Vogue at the time.

Detmar Blow …Issie was the one who suggested that McQueen use his middle name, Alexander, for his designs, as she thought it sounded nobler  -  like Alexander the  Great. And she was a deeply significant creative influence for him, as he acknowledged when he dedicated his fourth show in 1994 to her.

In 1996 Alexander McQueen became chief designer at Givenchy, certainly not without Isabella’s help and determination. But Alexander didn’t give her a job, instead he took Katy England with him to Givenchy. Isabella was very hurt.

Detmar Blow…. his treatment of her, once he hit the big time as chief  designer at Givenchy in 1996, all the more deplorable. Brutally, after all the help she had given him, McQueen did not find a role  to give Issie at the fashion house. But, despite the hurt, Issie was determined to stay friends with her former protégé. She would continue to be given pride of place in the front row of his  shows and he was always welcome down at Hilles. But the balance of power had shifted….

Isabella became fashion director of Tatler and consulted for DuPont Lycra, Lacoste, and Swarovski. In 2002, she became the subject of an exhibition entitled When Philip met Isabella, featuring sketches and photographs of her wearing Treacy’s hat designs. In 2004, she had a brief acting cameo in the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and in 2005 she starred in a project by artist Matthieu Laurette, commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects 2005 and entitled “What Do They Wear at Frieze Art Fair”. In the same year MAC cosmetics honoured her with a lipstick (named of course): Isabella. 

Toward the end of her life, Isabella had become seriously depressed and was reportedly anguished over her inability to “find a home in a world she influenced“. Although Isabella continued to produce incredibly creative shoots, her depression really took hold. In 2003, she had her first spell in a mental health clinic. On 6 May 2007 Isabella made her seventh suicide attempt. When Detmar got to her hospital bedside after she had swallowed poison (weedkiller), he dared hope she might survive, even though a nurse told me she was dying.

After her death, Detmar Blow confirmed that his wife suffered from depression and that she had once declared, “I’m fighting depression and I can’t beat it”.

At the funeral in 2007, Alexander McQueen was utterly devastated, distraught. Isabella was buried in McQueen, in a red-and-gold brocade dress. Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy and her sister Julia helped dress the body.

Alexander McQueen tribute Spring 2008 show: La Dame Bleue

On entering the white-on-white space the mood had an affectionate nostalgia for Issie Blow, whose favourite Robert Paguet scent, Fracas had been sprayed liberally around the room and pink boxes containing fragrance were on the seats: all denoted that this would be a fitting tribute ~ love was in the air. As her two most successful discoveries and close friends, Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen collaborated on the show in tribute to Issie

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The brilliantly eccentric, beautiful and iconic Isabella Blow lived fashion like no other.

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Rudi Gernreich designs

Peggy Moffitt : ‘He seamed to be 30 years ahead of time. Rudi Gernreich is a widely misunderstood fashion prophet….’

The New York Times

By Caroline Weber  (September 17, 2006)

For a time, the former schoolmates remained close, but by the early 60’s relations between them had cooled. In 1958, Saint Laurent triumphed with his first collection at Dior. (Dior had named Saint Laurent his successor before he died in 1957.) Not long afterward, Saint Laurent met an older man, Pierre Bergé, who appointed himself the couturier’s Svengali. Between the international renown he achieved as Dior’s helmsman and his involvement with Bergé, with whom, in 1961, he founded a label bearing his own name, Saint Laurent had little time for his old school chum. Lagerfeld reacted by declaring haute couture a dying art and forsaking it to work as a freelance ready-to-wear designer. Although the two rivals socialized in the same fizzy beau monde, professionally they were worlds apart.

Compounding this divergence was a profound difference in style. Almost from the outset, Saint Laurent had a highly specific vision of female elegance. With innovations like the safari jacket and le smoking (a women’s trouser suit based on the tuxedo), he developed an instantly recognizable look, reprised in his subsequent collections. (His attitude toward his pets betrays a similar fixity of spirit: “Each time one of Yves’s French bulldogs dies, he mourns it, buys another and calls it Moujik,” the author writes.) Lagerfeld, by contrast, was predictable only in his self-proclaimed habit of “vampirizing” any and all cultural references that came his way. His ready-to-wear confections betrayed a wild eclecticism. His signature statements — like the ponytail, sunglasses and fingerless gloves he sports today — were reserved mainly for his artfully outrageous self.

The more publicly flamboyant of the two designers, Lagerfeld was far less adventurous when it came to private indulgences. Saint Laurent partook recklessly of the alcohol, drugs and casual sex that abounded in Paris in the 70’s, but Lagerfeld avoided such decadence. As it turned out, “glorious excess” took its toll on Saint Laurent. His substance abuse led to frequent hospitalizations, and to an inordinate dependence on Bergé. (By 1976, Drake writes, Saint Laurent couldn’t write a check, board an airplane or book a restaurant without Bergé’s help.) Lagerfeld ceded control to no one, breaking off friendships once he had mined their creative possibilities or when they threatened to disappoint him. As he declared in 1997: “I was born to live alone. … But who cares?”

In the early 70s, however, Lagerfeld became enamored of Jacques de Bascher, a debauched young nobleman new to the Parisian scene, and began bankrolling his extravagant lifestyle. Bascher intrigued Saint Laurent, too, who saw in him a way to rebel against Bergé’s tight control and to “exorcise certain of his demons,” Drake writes. In 1973, Saint Laurent and Bascher began an affair — infuriating Lagerfeld and Bergé, and precipitating the fateful rupture between the two camps.

For Drake, Bascher personified the “gilt-edged decadence” that defined his intimates’ milieu. Drawing on the link he himself made between “decadence” and “falling” (a link that apparently inspired her book’s title), she writes: “For Jacques, it was always beauty that justified the fall. Beauty made even the idea of self-destruction … a possibility.” By self-destruction, the author means not only drug addiction but AIDS, from which Bascher died at 38. But despite Drake’s presentation of him as a doomed artiste, his demise comes more as an anticlimax than as a tragedy of genius lost. Having “never carved a statue or painted a picture” or designed an article of clothing, Bascher left behind only a legacy of hatred between two men far more talented than he.

This animosity, though, assumed epic proportions, as Drake, with her insiders feel for fashion-world cattiness, shows in splendid detail. When it relates the fallout from the two designers’ feud, “The Beautiful Fall” crackles with excitement. Mutual friends were forced to choose sides; barbs flew in the press; and the rivalry that had been brewing since their school days became a driving force in Parisian fashion. Declaring himself “the last couturier,” Saint Laurent retreated into what some critics perceived as stultifying nostalgia for his own past work. Lagerfeld took issue with this approach. “The best way of surviving in the present,” he announced pointedly, “is forgetting the past, to permanently recreate one’s paradise.” In 1982, Lagerfeld found a new paradise to recreate when he was tapped to design for Chanel. Lagerfeld’s subsequent “irreverent manipulation of the Chanel oeuvre” — a classic case of his “vampirizing” — “drove Yves Saint Laurent to distraction,” Drake writes, but it also provided a refreshing counterpoint to his increasingly mummified version of couture.

In 2002, Saint Laurent retired from fashion and became a recluse; his atelier has since reopened as a museum. Lagerfeld, conversely, has breathed “life into a moribund fashion house” and made Chanel one of the world’s most bankable bastions of style. In so doing, he has not only become a legend in his own right, but “invented the blueprint” for designers like Tom Ford, Nicolas Ghesquière and Marc Jacobs, who have likewise catapulted to stardom by reviving languishing labels. Perhaps not incidentally, Ford drew Saint Laurent’s ire when, in 1999, he began reworking the maestro’s best-known staples for the Saint Laurent ready-to-wear line. Ford’s modus operandi was surely too reminiscent of Lagerfeld’s “vampirizing” to appeal to Saint Laurent. Indeed, Drake suggests, by making constant reinvention the watchword of modern fashion, Lagerfeld just may have trounced his great rival at last.

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The Guardian

By Hadley Freeman (September 23, 2006)

Literature, like film, has never really been able to capture the fashion world. Three approaches prevail: there’s sarcastic mockery, as in The Devil Wears Prada; there’s campy revelling in its silliness, as in Fashion Babylon; and there’s po-faced solemnity, as in pretty much any fashion designer’s biography, which will almost invariably include a line such as, “His handling of the sleeve caused grown women to weep.”

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Fall-Fashion-Genius-Glorious/dp/0316001856

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and if it’s good enough for Kate……..

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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Filed under: biography

 (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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“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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” I admire her. I have been surging for her shadow all my life, it’s tiring.”

Yohji Yamamoto about Madeleine Vionnet

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Biography

Madeleine Vionnet (Madame Vionnet) was born in June 1876 and started her apprenticeship as a seamstress at age 11. After a short marriage, she left her husband and went to London to work as a hospital seamstress, where she learnt about mass-production. Eventually she returned to Paris to be trained at the fashion houses of the Callot Soeurs and Jaques Doucet. At the Callot Soeurs she learned about the bias cut. Madeleine is often credited as the inventor of that cut, which did upset her very much, because she never claimed herself that place in history! But she did expand the use of the bias cut to perfection.

Bias cut dresses

The bias cut: a diagonal way of cutting fabric in order to give it stretchability. By making dresses that could be put over the head, because of the stretching, Madeleine created garments that were both easy to get in & out of (and that was revolutionary by itself)  and were comfortable to wear, something we find in tricot knits today. The bias cut made that the dresses clung to women’s bodies, accentuating the natural form as opposed to ‘distorting’ them with corsettes and other popular (and uncomfortable) undergarments.

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In 1912 Madeleine founded her fashion house Madeleine Vionnet, but two years later she had to close again because of WWI and set off to visit Rome.

In 1919, the house was reopened and Madeleine asked Thayaht (the pseudonym of artist and designer Ernesto Michahelles) to create a logo. He also started to design textiles, clothing and jewelry for the house.

Madeleine always designed her new garments by draping on a reduced-scale doll (mannequin), which was half the size of an average body. The pattern was made afterwards by the house’s premiére (first seamstress), it was a new way of creating patterns. Normally the pattern is made before a toile (first-try) is made. Because every fabric, by its fiber and weave, reacts a little different Madeleine’s dresses were not lined. If they were sheer, a separate lining or slip was supplied, and each part was allowed to go its own way.

The house was at its peak in the 20′s and 30′s and Madeleine’s designs were inspired by Greek vases and Egyptian frescoes. She also designed ‘seam decorations’, decorating visible seams in star of flower shapes. Madeleine’s vision of the female form revolutionized modern clothing. But her revolutionary vision didn’t stop there…

Greek influences

In 1922, Théophile Bader, the owner of the Galeries Lafayette department store, joint the current shareholders in a new venture called Vionnet & Cie and a few months later the so-called ‘Temple of Fashion’ opened at 50, Avenue Montaigne, a collaboration of  architect Ferdinand Chanut, decorator George de Feure and crystal sculptor René Lalique, incorporated  a spectacular Salon de Présentation and two boutiques: a fur salon and a lingerie salon.

At the same time Madeleine Vionnet was one of the co-founders of the first anticopyist Association. To assure authenticity, Madeleine introduced fingerprinted labels: each garment produced in Vionnet studios bears a label featuring Vionnet’s original signing and an imprint of Vionnet’s right thumb.

In the mid-1920s Vionnet & Cie signed an exclusive agreement with Fifth Avenue retail store Hickson Inc. and a Vionnet New York Salon was opened. And in 1925 Vionnet was the first French couture house to open a subsidiary in New York: Madeleine Vionnet Inc. , a salon that sold ‘one-size-fits-all’ designs with unfinished hems, which could be adjusted to fit the client.

In those days, high fashion was unavailable for the poor and Madeleine, having worked as a hospital seamstress, knew some about mass production, which she used for her own label. The designs for the US wholesale were called ‘Repeated Original’ as a trademark name. Arguably it was the first ‘prêt-á-porter ever made.

Honeycomb dress

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Handkerchief dress

In 1932, The House Vionnet acquired a new five-storey building, housing 21 workshops, producing garments, shoes and accessories, but also clinic equipped with both doctors and dentists and a gymnasium. Madeleine employed what were considered revolutionary labor practices at the time, also providing a canteen, maternity leave, paid holidays and daycare. The house of Vionnet grew to employ 1,100 seamstresses.

In 1939, when WWII started, Madeleine closed her house, never to reopen it again. She lived to the age of 99 and died in 1975.

Madeleine Vionnet is considered one of the greatest designers.

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The bias cut quickly emulated in the Paris couture before World War II, but Madeleine Vionnet’s influences didn’t stop there. Geoffrey Beene, Halston, and other Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, Azzedine Alaïa in France, and Japanese designers Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo in the 1970s and 1980s used the techniques of Madeleine. Mikaye and Kawakubo were alerted to Madame Vionnet by her strong presence in The 10s, 20s, 30s exhibition organized by Diana Vreeland for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 and 1974.

Since 2006 the label Vionnet is in operating again. It has already employed many different designers, starting with of Sophia Kokosalaki (a ‘draping genius’ herself). By now Vionnet is designed by Rodolfo Paglialunga, who has been the womerswear designer for Prada for 13 years.

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The best book written about Madeleine Vionnet

“Vionnet’s passion and spirit have been carried on by Mrs. Betty Kirke…  Although many people were aware of the designer’s greatness, researching and writing the book was a difficult task which no one had dared to undertake in the past. Thanks to Mrs. Kirke, we are able to preserve and to pass on the precious legacy of Madeleine Vionnet.”

Issey Miyake from the foreward to ”Madeleine Vionnet” by Betty Kirke

to order at:   http://www.bettykirke.com/

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This Vionnet Pattern book  is written in Japanese, so advanced skills are needed to understand the patterns.

http://nl.etsy.com/listing/61691579/vionnet-japanese-dress-pattern-book?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=patronen+boek+Vionnet&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=NL&ga_item_language=en-US&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=patronen+boek+Vionnet

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Short video of the 2009 exhibition in Paris

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Nowadays Alber Elbaz does a fantastic job as head of Lanvin, but it all started with Jeanne Lanvin, the founder of the house of Lanvin. The grande dame was one of the greatest and least-know designers of the 20th century.

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Biography

Jeanne-Marie Lanvin ( 1 January 1867, Paris – 6 July 1946, Paris) was the eldest of 11 children. She trained as a dressmaker at a French fashion house called Talbot and then later worked as a milliner. She had the passion, unique talent, energy and enormous potential. In 1890, backed by a devoted client, she opened up a millinery shop (Coco Chanel also started as a milliner and opened a millinery shop, before she went into fashion design).

Jeanne Lanvin, who by now was a doting mother, also designed an extensive mini-me wardrobe for her daughter Marguerite Marie-Blanche di Pietro. She made such beautiful clothes for her daughter, using sophisticated textiles and colours, that they began to attract the attention of a number of wealthy people who requested copies for their own children and Jeanne branched out into childrenswear.

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Marguerite was the inspiration and driving force behind Lanvin’s designs. Jeanne created the looks of eternal youth, so that her daughter was the most beautiful woman in the world. Designing dream outfits that her daughter could wear gave Lanvin a chance to relive her own life as she’d always dreamed of. The life she had to sacrifice to her work.

Following customer demand for adult versions of her exquisite children’s clothing, she created women’s and girls’ lines. Her first garments follow the simple, Empire-waisted chemise silhouette. As a full-fledged couturière, she now joined the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture and becomes known for her mother-and-daughter outfits.

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The Lanvin logo

(The Lanvin logo is inspired by a picture of Jeanne and her daughter Marguerite.)

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Jeanne was in her fifties when she became famous for her designs for grown-ups and was not like her rival, Coco Chanel, designing for slim women, but continued her bouffant style for women with a larger size, like Paul Poiret did. The robe de style bouffant dress became her signature piece.

Jeanne loved to work with expensive fabrics and her garments were easily recognisable for her masterful use of embellishment, her delicate trimmings and her embroideries along with exquisite beadwork in floral inspired colours. Often her embellishments included free-flowing ribbons, ruffles, flowers, lace or mirrors inspired by her travels. Ornamentation included appliqué, couching, quilting, parallel stitching, embroidery and discreet use of sequins.

Jeanne’s clothes were about perfection. She chose the fabrics, then developed her own  colour schemes and even built a dye factory in Nanterre in 1922 to achieve the subtle  inimitable shades she was after. She used pieces of mica, coral, minute shells,  gold and silver threads, ribbons and raffia along side of pearls and sequins, so  that the beading would match the fabric, the mood and the motif.  Fabrics most often used were silk, taffeta, velvet, silk chiffon, organza, lace, fur and tulle.

Unlike her rivals Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret or Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin was a very private person – she would rather stay on background than dissolve herself into the lights of fame and social glamour. Dressed in black, she was more keen on concentrating on her designs and communicating with fabrics rather than people.

This was also the problem, Jeanne Lanvin had no public image and no public relations in the industry. Her rivals all understood that they needed to embody their house in their own appearance, so they were tireless self-promoters. Karl Elberfeld wrote about Jeanne: “Her image wasn’t as strong as that of Chanel because she was a nice old lady and not a fashion plate”.

On the other hand, Jeanne was a great businesswoman and 1918 she took over the whole building at 22 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. It included two workrooms for semi-tailored clothes, two for tailored ones, one for lingerie, one for hats, one that was used as a design studio, and two that were given over to embroidery; the latter was a speciality which Lanvin, unlike other couturiers, did not entrust to outside workers.

And Jeanne did understand that fashion isn’t just about clothes, it is a way of life and in the 1920s she already opened shops devoted to home décor (Lanvin Décoration, at 15 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), sportswear,  menswear, furs, swimwear and lingerie. Lanvin became the first house to dress the whole family!

In 1924, Jeanne was one of the first couturiers to create a division for fragrances, Lanvin Parfums and the next years a fragrance factory is constructed near Nanterre. Mon Peche scent debuted, but didn’t do so well untill the name was changed into My Sin. In honor of Marguerite’s (who, by then, calls herself by her middle name: Marie-Blanche) 30th birthday Arpege, lanvin’s first perfume, debuted. Later many new fragrances followed, like Scandal, Eau de Lanvin and Rumeur.

During WWII, Jeanne continued to operate her house, creating special collections for women engaged in war work and regulation uniforms for female armed-service members.

Jeanne Lanvin’s Art Deco appartement

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“When you are constantly thinking about new designs everything you see is  transformed and adapted to whatever is in hand. The process happens naturally  and becomes an instinct, a truth, a necessity, another language.”

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In 1946, Jeanne Lanvin died at age 79. her daughter, Marie- Blanche de Polignac took ownership until she herself passed in 1958, and the house of Lanvin went to their cousin Yves Lanvin. From then on the label passed from hand to hand. By the time Alber Elbaz took over in 2002 it was the oldest fashion house in continuous operation, and despite its dimmed reputation, it somehow survived and overnight became a huge success again!

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Books on Jeanne Lanvin

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

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www.amazon.com

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From sudden Fame to harsh Criticism

In many ways Corinne Day  memory is shadowed by the moment of her greatest good fortune: her spotting of a Polaroid of a gangly Croydon teenager among the files of a London model agency in the spring of 1990. She brought a photograph of the 14-year-old Kate Moss to Phil Bicker, the visionary art director of the Face magazine, then the single most influential style magazine in Europe. Back then, Bicker was busy reinventing British fashion photography as a gritty, altogether less glamorous form. He had gathered a bunch of young and ambitious photographers, including Glen Luchford, David Sims and Nigel Shafran, all of whom became successful in the fashion and art world. Corinne Day was perhaps the most temperamental, a feisty, self-taught, model-turned-photographer with attitude to burn.

“It was an exciting time because we were making up the rules as we went along,” says Bicker, “I saw the same thing in Kate as Corinne saw, that she represented something very real: the opposite, in fact, of all the unreal high glamour of fashion. I sent Corinne and stylist, Melanie Ward, down to Camber Sands to do a shoot with her.”

The cover of the July 1990 issue of the Face gained iconic status in the fashion world and beyond. On it, the young Moss, who appears to be wearing no make-up, grins like an excited and slightly gauche teenager from beneath a headdress made of fabric and feathers. The cover line announces “The 3rd Summer of Love” and promises features on the Stone Roses, Daisy Age fashion and psychedelia. The summer – and the decade, and the style-obsessed world in which we now live – had found its face.

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Inside, Kate Moss cavorted on Camber Sands in hippy-style clothes, sometimes topless, like a girl who could not quite believe her luck. Bicker is quick to point out that, although the fashion shoot seemed casual and unstyled, it was, in reality, the opposite. “It looked natural and simple but it was carefully constructed to look like that. In fact, as I recall, I sent them down there two or three times until they got it right. Kate hadn’t been modelling for very long but, even in her awkwardness, she had that thing about her that Twiggy had in the 60s, a freshness that matched the times.”

Juergen Teller, one of Corinne Day’s peers, and now the most globally successful photographer of all the young iconoclasts of that time, concurs. “I loved Corinne’s first photographs of Kate. They had that end-of-summer feel and seemed very fresh and almost naive, but in a good way. To me, they were her best photographs.”

The 3rd Summer of Love

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Revealingly, neither Kate Moss or her model agency were pleased with the photographs, finding them too raw and unadorned. Corinne Day had brought her own experience of being a model into the shoot. She later said, “It was something so deep inside, being a model and hating the way I was made up. The photographer always made me into someone I wasn’t. I wanted to go in the opposite direction.”

But the next time Corinne Day impinged on the public consciousness, that freshness had been replaced by a darker, harsher vision. In 1993, she photographed Kate Moss for a fashion shoot for British Vogue, Under-exposure. In it, the model looked strung out and sad, dressed down in baggy tights and stringy underwear that exacerbated her skinniness. Again, the photographs were a reaction to the glitzy unrealness of the fashion photography that Vogue usually featured, but here the extremity of Corinne Day’s vision provoked outrage and hysterical headlines about the glamorization of anorexia and hard drug use.

The terms “heroin chic” and “grunge fashion” were born and bandied about in the tabloids. By then, the troubled and troublesome photographer had burned too many bridges in the fashion world and, more problematically, was actually living in, and intimately photographing, a bohemian milieu defined by hard drug use.

Under-exposure

Corinne Day later said that she took the shot above on a day when Kate had been crying after a fight with her then-boyfriend, resulting in the vulnerability that turned this into one of the most iconic and controversial images produced in the 90s (on, of course, the charge that Kate was too thin, heroin chic,etc). It’s the most reproduced image of the entire editorial, but the clothes (pink Liza Bruce vest and Hennes- now known as H&M- chiffon knickers) are rarely remembered, or credited. I have the picture on my Wall of Fame. The vulnerability, innocence & simplicity of the image made it iconic picture to me too.

Start photography

Corinne grew up in Ickenham with her younger brother and her grandparents. She left school aged sixteen and worked as an assistant in a local bank. After a year at the bank she became an international mail courier. It was during this period that someone suggested she try modelling – she worked consistently as a catalogue model for several years. In 1985 she met Mark Szaszy on a train in Tokyo - Mark was a male model and had a keen interest in film and photography.

During an extended trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, Mark taught Corinne how to use a camera and in 1987 they moved to Milan. It was in Milan that Day’s career as a fashion photographer started. Having produced photographs of Mark and her friends for their modelling portfolios, Corinne began approaching magazines for work.

From Fashion to Documentary

Corinne retreated from fashion work in the wake of the heroin chic debate, instead choosing to tour America with the band Pusherman and concentrate on her documentary photography. She also undertook work photographing musicians, including the image of Moby, used on his 1999 album Play.

Her autobiographical book, Diary was published by Krus Verlag in 2000, and contained frank and at times shocking images of Corinne and her friends. The images in Diary featured young people hanging out, taking drugs and having sex, and have been compared to the documentary realism of Nan Goldin. Coinciding with the publication of Diary,  Corinne had two large-scale exhibitions in London in 2000.

Diary

Diary also records the dramatic events of the fateful night in 1996 when Corinne collapsed in her New York apartment and was rushed to Bellevue hospital. There, she underwent an emergency operation for a brain tumour. She insisted that Mark photographed her, even in the moments leading up to her surgery. She looks dazed, helpless, disoriented. “To me, photography is about showing us things we don’t normally see,” she said later, “Getting as close as you can to real life.” The book’s final picture is of a beach strewn with beer cans: a glimmer of hope, and yet a tarnished one.

After her initial illness, Corinne made an uneasy truce with fashion photography. She abandoned her raw, edgy style for something more traditional in the fashion shoots she did for, among others, British, French and Italian Vogue, Arena and Vivienne Westwood.

Corinne’s tumour returned in 2008 and a campaign called Save the Day was started by her friends to pay for treatment in a clinic in Arizona. It raised £100,000, much of it from the sale of signed, limited-edition prints, including several of Kate Moss that were signed by the model and the photographer.

Corinne Day, who died 27 August 2010 , will be remembered for transforming fashion with her pictures of the young Kate Moss for the Face.

Most information for this post from:  The Observer, article by  Sean O’Hagan & Wikipedia

Official website Corinne Day:  http://www.corinneday.co.uk/home.php

                                                  (Coco Chanel by Richard Avedon)

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I must have read it 4 or 5 times now, Chanel: A Woman of her Own by Axel Madsen and like to recommend it as a very good read.

   “I didn’t create fashion, I am fashion.”   

Coco Chanel’s genius for fashion may have been distilled in simplicity, but her life was an extravaganza. A brilliant array of luminaries fell under her spell – Picasso, Churchill, Cocteau; lovers included the Grand Duke Dmitri; the English roué, Boy Capel; a French poet; a German spy and the Duke of Westminster, who offered to leave his wife for her permanently, if she would only bear him an heir. Paradoxically, though she might have been regarded in some lights as a pioneering feminist – sacrificing marriage to a revolutionary career in couture – Chanel was utterly baffled by the idea of women’s politics. Educated women? ‘A woman’s education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stockings, never go out without a hat.’ Chanel’s rise from penniless orphan to millionaire designer – ‘inventing’ sportswear, the little black dress and No. 5 – makes compelling reading, not least because she was inclined to design her own life as deftly as she did her fashions. Axel Madsen negotiates Chanel’s smoke screens with skill, bringing this tantalizing woman to life in all her alluring complexity.

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PEERS BOOK REVIEWS

Review by Cathleen Myers

It’s not easy to construct a biography of a compulsive liar, especially when your subject is a highly creative liar who told a different set of lies to each biographer and eventually came to believe some of her own fantasies.

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According to Axel Madsen’s well-documented biography, most of the “accepted” story about Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s romantic early life is pure fantasy. She didn’t learn dressmaking from sewing samplers for her strict “aunts” or from “taking courses in design;” but from the nuns at the orphanage where she was raised after her mother’s death and from an ordinary apprenticeship at a provincial dressmaker’s. Her first hat shop was started on money from her first protector, Etienne Balsan, not from her first love the polo-playing Englishman “Boy” Capell. Her father was not a respectable horse trader but an itinerant market fair trader who abandoned her; and she was illegitimate, a disgrace she sought to hide all her life.

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Madsen’s biography is an eminently readable celebration of Chanel’s genius as both a couturier and as a self-made business woman who refused the easy life of a kept woman to start her own business, rise to the top of a male-dominated profession and help transform women’s fashion from the opulent Edwardian style to the practical, natural, “modern” look most of us wear today (to work, at least). The author’s style is lively and novelistic and he does have a good knowledge of the fashion industry, though he gives Coco credit for innovations that were not her own (The “feminization of masculine fashion” had been going on in England before Coco’s birth). But Madsen dishes so well about the deadly world of Haute Couture that his lavishly illustrated book is a must for anyone interested in the history of fashion and costume.

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Historian’s warning: Madsen’s main weakness is a lack of understanding of the class structure of Chanel’s world (as his misuse of British titles makes clear). A true American, Madsen wonders why Coco fought so hard to conceal her “roots.” Since her true rags-to-riches story is so remarkable, why pretend to have risen from the lower middle class? But those of us who understand 19th century social history understand Chanel’s motives. Nor does Madsen seem to understand the social cachet that an English duke carries even today – which explains Chanel’s desire to marry the eccentric Duke of Westminster, her ruthless erasure of her past, and Westminster’s ultimate refusal to marry her. He was desperate for a male heir and, judging from Debrett’s, preferred well-born brides .

Coco Chanel’s life in photographs & quotes

Coco Chanel at the age of 23

. Coco & Etienne Balsan

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Coco Chanel & Boy Capel, 1912

Coco & Adrienne in 1913, in front of Coco’s first boutique in Deauville

Coco & Serge Lifar (The principal dancer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes during its final years in the late 1920′s)

Coco photographed by Cecil Beaton, 1937

Coco & Salvador Dalí

Coco Chanel at 50 by George Hoyningen-Huene

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“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”

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Coco working on het beloved jewelry

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“Fashion has become a joke. The designers have forgotten that there are women inside the dresses. Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move, to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape.”

Biography

After ending the collaboration with the house of Dior, Roger Vivier opens a new boutique at 24 rue François Premier, across from maison Dior. He consults with aeronautical engineers on the design of his swooping ”comma” heel, that became another one of the most copied styles in footwear history.

Comma heel

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Roger Vivier’s collaboration with Yves Saint Laurent

He also creates shoes for top designers and couturiers, like Emanuel Ungaro, André Coureges, Cristobal Balenciaga and features risqué crocodile thigh-high boots for Yves Saint Laurent, who is now designing under his own name.

Another shoe debuts in Yves Saint Laurent’s “Mondrian” collection in 1965. The design has a square heel and a pilgrim-buckle placed on the extreme tip of the shoe, unlike the seveteenthe-century version where it was positioned on the top of the foot. 

In 1966 Roger Vivier designs transparent-plastic shoes and boots for Yves Saint Laurent.

Crocodile thigh-high boot

Pilgrim buckle shoe

 Transparent-plastic boot

Belle de Jour

In 1967, French siren Catherine Deneuve pairs her Yves Saint Laurent wardrobe with Rogier Vivier pilgrim shoes in the movie Belle de Jour by  Luis Buñuel . The movie becomes a cult hit right away and the pilgrim shoe becomes a runaway bestseller, two hundred thousand pairs are sold in one year and is the best sold modelfor Roger Vivier ever…..

‘There’s nothing like a movie that celebrates the Madonna-whore conundrum to get hearts racing and tongues wagging. Throw in English subtitles and Catherine Deneuve in various states of undress, and you have a winning cinematic equation. But while the guys were salivating over Deneuve’s sexy siren scenes, the women were likely captivated by her classic Roger Vivier pumps. Although Vivier had already established himself as a footwear master by the time Belle de Jour came out. The elegant Pilgrim pumps paired with the sleek Yves Saint Laurent wardrobe, and juxtaposed against Deneuve’s character’s sordid double life, elevated the shoes to instant cult status. But trust us when we say you can’t go wrong in a black mid-heel variety. Look what it did for Deneuve’s sex appeal.’

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In 1968 Roger ads scarves and gloves to his collection and a year later Monsieur Vivier men’s department opens in the Vivier boutique, which offers made-to-measure shoes.

Among Roger Vivier’s biggest fans were Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor , who enshrined his exquisite creations in a custom closet; and the cinema femme fatale Marlene Dietrich, who haunted his boutique almost daily and was rewarded with custom black satin pumps held up by glittering rhinestone balls. Vogue’s editor, Diana Vreeland, insisted her maid polish the soles of her Viviers with rhinoceros horn. Included in her vast collection were a dozen each of his pilgrims and rock-star vinyl boots. Vreeland was among the many who regarded Vivier’s work as true art; in her 1977 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute exhibit, “Vanity Fair,” she contrasted examples of his craftsmanship with that of 18th-century artisans.

Diane Vreeland wearing Roger Vivier boots

Wallis Simpson closet with Roger Vivier shoes

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In 1994 the 86-year-old Roger Vivier signs a new licensing agreement with Rautureau Apple Shoes, which in turn allows him to open a  shop in Paris the following year. The Rautureau venture gives Vivier the backing to continue doing what he loves the most—designing shoes. Yet three years later, in October 1998, Vivier dies in Toulouse, France. He is remembered by many, including fellow shoe designer. “People try to copy him, but it’s impossible to find that mix of technical skill and design.” Kenneth Jay Lane, who has worked with the master , declares,

“He was the world’s greatest artist of shoe design.”

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Random collection of Roger Vivier heels, shoes and boots

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Roger Vivier book by Rizzoli

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A gorgeous tribute to the legendary shoe and accessories designs of Roger Vivier.  Master designer Roger Vivier elevated both the form and decoration of ladies’ shoes during his sixty-year career. His innate Parisian style embodied a sense of perfection and craftsmanship, and his work was coveted by style icons from Elsa Schiaparelli to Jackie Onassis. Described by Yves St. Laurent as bringing to his work a “level of charm, delicacy, refinement and poetry unsurpassed,” he created the first stiletto heel for a ready-to-wear shoe line with the house of Dior in 1955. His shoes are legendary, and the tradition of his innovative spirit continues with the revival of the house by current designer Bruno Frisoni, who has updated Vivier’s concepts, bringing his own touch to signature shapes and embellishments (including the buckle pump made famous by Catherine Deneuve in Belle du Jour). This lavish volume celebrates the history of the venerated house and charts the current evolution of the fantastic haute-couture designs that keep Roger Vivier at the top of every well-dressed woman’s list. With gorgeous new photography of the house’s collection of vintage shoes, beautifully rendered sketches, and details of the amazing accessories coming out of Roger Vivier today, this book is as chic as the shoes that fill its pages.

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Exhibition

Virgule, etc… in the Footsteps of Roger Vivier

A RETROSPECTIVE paying tribute to the life and work of Roger Vivier is coming to Paris. The exhibition will be staged at the Palais de Tokyo in October, to coincide with Paris Fashion Week, and was curated by Olivier Saillard – director of the Musée Galliera. 

The showcase is titled Virgule, etc… Dans Les Pas De Roger Vivier (Comma, etc… In The Footsteps of Roger Vivier), so named after the designer’s famous comma-shaped heels. The exhibition will take the form of “a pastiche of a museum dedicated to shoes”, explains a press release, featuring about 140 footwear designs.

The retrospective will pay tribute to the brand’s eponymous founder, who died in 1998, as well as tracking the more recent history of the footwear label. Roger Vivier was revived in 2000 by Diego Della Valle, chairman of Tod’s SpA, and Bruno Frisoni joined as creative director in 2002.

The exhibition will run from October 2 to November 18.

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Audrey Hepburn dress from  Breakfast At Tiffany’s, 1961 , by Givenchy

Not the Original dress….

Why not the poster-picture of Audrey Hepburn wearing perhaps the most famous ‘little black dress’ of all time at the auction?

In 1961, Givenchy designed a little black dress for the opening scene of Blake Edwards’ romantic comedy, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, where Hepburn plays a leading role alongside actor George Peppard. Audrey took two copies of the dress back to Paramount, but the dresses, which revealed a considerable amount of Audrey’s leg, were not suitable for the movie and the lower half of the dress was redesigned by Edith Head. The original hand-stitched dress is currently in Givenchy’s private archive, whilst one copy Audrey took back to Paramount is on display at The Museum of Film in Madrid and the other was auctioned at Christie’s in December 2006. None of the actual dresses created by Givenchy were used in either the movie or the promotional photography. The movie poster was designed by artist Robert McGinnis and in Sam Wasson’s book, Fifth Avenue, 5am, he explains that the photos he based the poster on did not show any leg and he added the leg to make the poster more appealing. The actual dresses used in the movie, created by Edith Head, were destroyed by Head and Hepburn at Western Costume in California after shooting.

And the dress has its own Wikipedia page!

Next week more Audrey Hepburn & Hubert de Givenchy

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Dimitri from Paris fantastic ‘A very stylish Girl’ with Audrey Hepburn & George Peppard phrases from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s' 

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I was a success in my job as a cover girl,” she writes, “and I owe that success more to an expressive face than to my good looks.”

Bettina

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Biography

Simone Micheline Bodin (born in France, 1925), known professionally as Bettina or Bettina Graziani, was a French fashion model of the 1940s and 1950. Simone spends her childhood in Lavel, France. Her first job is tinting drawings for an architect, while she’s  dreaming of becoming a fashion designer. She moves to Paris and presents her drawings to couturier Jacques Costet at his atelier at 4 Rue de la Paix. Costet isn’t interested in her drawings, but takes Simone on as a model. “My round country-girl’s cheeks and healthy appearance made me look quite unlike all the other mannequins,” she will later write.

Simone meets Gilbert “Beno” Graziani, a genial man-about-town (who will later become a well-known Paris Match photographer). Together they move to the Cote d’Azur to run a bar in Juan-les-Pins to make ends meet. Back in Paris, Simone marries Graziani in a borrowed Jacques Fath dress.

In 1947 Jacques Fath hires Simone to model for him and transforms her “from a long-legged redhead with freckles to a supremely elegant, streamlined girl”. He renames her Bettina (because there is another model named Simone in his troupe) and she is photographed in Fath finery by Erwin Blumenfeld for Vogue. A year later Bettina makes her runway debut for Jacques Fath for spring.

Photograph by Irving Penn.Published in Vogue, September 1, 1950.

Jacques Fath directs her to shed her chignon in favor of a boyish “Greek shepherd” cut in 1949, which will spark a revolution in women’s hairstyles.. The same year Bettina makes her first trip to America, to work with Vogue’s Irving Penn. She gets offered a contract by 20th Century Fox, which she turns down. She is also invited by Christian Dior to join his fashion house, but  chooses instead to work for Jacques Fath.

Bettina divorces from Beno Graziani in 1950 and later befriends Peter Viertel, screenwriter of The African Queen.

After Jacques Fath’s tragic early death, Bettina goes to work for “handsome giant” Hubert de Givenchy, as a muse and press agent in 1952. Bettina organizes and models Givenchy’s first collection, which includes an embroidered and frilled, Byronesque “Bettina” blouse, which becomes a fashion icon in the early 1950s and inspired the bottle for the best-selling Givenchy parfum ”Amarige.”. In his early seasons, Givenchy channels Bettina’s personal style, sending her out barefoot in cotton separates, revolutionizing the couture at that time. Together they travel to New York for the “April in Paris” benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria. Designer and muse do a television interview with newsman Edward R. Murrow.

Bettina in parfume ad for Canasta by Jaques Fath

Bettina blouse by Givenchy

The Alliance with Givenchy ends after two years and Bettina is now a freelance model. She  moves for a time to Hollywood with her boyfriend. Peter Viertel.  Approached by a Hungarian manufacturer, Monsieur Hein, to create a line of sweaters called Bettina.

In 1955 Bettina meets Prince Aly Khan, a playboy who briefly was the United Nations ambassador from Pakistan. She gives up modeling to be his constant companion. This, she’ll later write, requires a change of style. “When I looked in the mirror I sometimes found it hard to recognize myself. Where was Bettina, the leading mannequin, ever in the forefront of fashion? The Bettina I saw had hair as long as Mélisande’s, and extremely decorous dresses that were sometimes even longer than fashion dictated. But I accepted what I saw in the mirror with perfectly good grace, since I knew that this was how Aly liked me to look.”

Bettina & Prince Aly Khan

“No. 1 topic among the marriage-makers of the International Smart Set these days is the romance of Prince Aly Khan, ex-husband of Rita Hayworth, and the beauteous ‘Bettina,’ . . . ex–cover girl.” Bettina receives two dozen roses from the prince daily, the press reports

In 1960 disaster strikes when Aly Khan is killed in a car accident, which Bettina survives, though she’ll suffer a miscarriage. She inherits Khan’s Chantilly château, Green Lodge (which she’ll later sell to Khan’s son, Karim).

In 1967 Bettina, “the green-eyed railway worker’s daughter” goes back to modeling at the age of 42. And all because she’s bored. Bettina works for Coco Chanel, but she has a problem, for as the couturier says of her, “She needs to lose a little weight. I have told her to follow my example and don’t eat at weekends.”  After presenting Chanel’s collection in July, Bettina says, “It was fun to do it once. I never will again.”

Coco Chanel & Bettina

Bettina becomes director of haute couture at Emanuel Ungaro in 1976. “I needed to go to work for the money,” she later says.

In 2010 Frédéric Mitterrand presents Bettina with France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award, saying, “You are, in a word, the embodiment of the modern woman.”

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Portrets

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Interview Magazine

Interview by Colleen Nika,   publised: 18 December, 2008  

During the postwar creative boom of early 50s France, three fashion designers revolutionized couture: Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain, and Jacques Fath. Supermodel Simone Micheline Bodin Graziani, pet named “Bettina”, rubbed shoulders with all of them, and played muse to the youngest of them, Jacques Fath. With her red hair and fresh face, Bettina personified the innovation, wit, and accessibility of Fath’s brand. Fath died in 1954, but his bold silhouettes, dramatic necklines, and unorthodox flourishes—”flying saucer buttons,” popularized by Hollywood starlets and Bettina’s editorials—continue to influence designers like Viktor & Rolf, John Galliano, and Giambattista Valli. Bettina famously lent her name to an iconic blouse by Hubert de Givenchy, from his first collection, but she considers her formative Fath years the highlight of her career. .  

Jacques Fath in studio with Bettina. Photo Louis Dahl-Wolfe

Colleen Nika: History has come to associate you with Givenchy, but before your worked with him, you were a muse to Jacques Fath. How did he jumpstart your career?

Bettina: I started working with Fath when I was very young, back in 1947. I had modeled before then, but on a much smaller scale. And I worked with Fath longer than any other designer in my career—four years. From the draping process through our presentations and campaigns, he used me for all of his new collections. He liked that I was “different”: I was very young, very genuine. I wore no makeup and I had red hair. At the time, Fath was interested in conveying an American spirit and a brand new attitude. He wanted to communicate a modern image to the media; it was very important to him. So, I became the face of Fath. 

CN: What do you consider most memorable during your years as Fath’s muse?

B: Fath would throw costume balls in the countryside, at the Château de Corbeville. All the best buyers, stars, writers, even other designers like Balenciaga and Balmain would come. Sometimes we would throw 20s– and 30s–themed partiesm, or cowboy-themed parties. Imagination was everything. And we had a great time at Fath’s studio, especially during draping sessions. Givenchy, who worked there when he was very young, says it was a beautiful experience and that he learned so much during that time. Guy Laroche got his start there, too. This was just after the French liberation; we all lived for the creative moment.

Bettina in Jacques Fath, 1950

Bettina in Givenchy winter dress, 1955

CN: After your Fath years, what path did your modeling career take?

B: I worked for Givenchy for two years. I also did a lot of magazine work. I was everywhere: in Vogue, of course, but also in Elle, which was a very new magazine at that time. In those days, the models would have their name credited in the magazines, so I had a lot of publicity. I stopped modeling in the late 50s, but later, I did some work for Valentino and I was a US press agent for Emanuel Ungaro.

CN: What are your thoughts on the contemporary modeling profession?

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B: The models are different now—they are so young, and they all look the same. Of course, I was young when I started, too, but there was so much less competition, less big names. But then, the entire business was different. The presentations were much smaller; collections were shown to select clients in salons, like a trunk show. You could reach out and touch the clothes. It was approachable. Back then, there was no ready-to-wear, only couture. Of course, because the runway events are so costly now, the industry is returning to smaller presentations. But the model’s role has definitely changed.

CN: Speaking of the present, how are you keeping busy these days? Are you still actively involved in fashion? What designers interest you?

B: Well, I travel a lot; I recently was in Malta and the Riviera. But I live in Paris, so I am still very engaged with fashion. I go the shows every season. My favorite designers? Azzedine Alaia and Yohji Yamomoto. But especially Alaia; he is the ultimate innovator. Actually, I am wearing couture Alaia now—he made this for me two years ago. [stands up to show sculptural black sheath]. And I still am very busy; I have many projects. People call me all time—they want to interview me: they ask me about the Parisian fashion scene of the 50s; they want my pictures and commentary. And I love talking about fashion history, so I am happy to do it.

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Twiggy & Justin de Villeneuve

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For a while now I’ve been curious about ‘what happened to Justin de Villeneuve, after he and Twiggy split up as a couple and professionally’, so it was time to find out more about him. And I’m happy I did, because it’s the story of a chameleon and a one of a kind, who reinvented himself more often than Madonna did……, being a boxer, a colourful villain, a hairdresser, interior decorator, manager, photographer and poet, but best known for launching Twiggy’s modeling career and making her a superstar.

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Short Biography

Born Nigel Jonathan Davies in East End London, 1939. But Nigel didn’t seem a great name for a boy with ambitions, so he starts calling himself Nagels. Everyone, he says, with their fingers in dodgy pies, knew Nagels. He was one of the most persuasive mouths around, learning his craft by encouraging punters into strip clubs in Soho. From there he turned a few folding ones as the plant in the audience who volunteers to fight the boxer in the fairground ring and soon he was buying and selling this and that. Once he got his hands on a job lot of wine.

“It was an insurance job, Jewish lightning struck the warehouse,” he remembers. “The wine tasted like paint-stripper, but I just stuck fancy labels on it, and sold the lot to Vidal Sassoon for his wedding. He invited me along, I was very nervous, positioned myself by the door to do a runner. But they were such gullibles, his guests, they got conned by the labels, everyone loved it. Vidal was so impressed, he made me his assistant.”

It was then, as number two to the fanciest snipper in town, that the young fast-lip decided that a false name was required to complete the con. This time he renamed himself Christian St Forget. But not for long. “I’d heard the name Justin and I liked it. Then someone said I should choose a French second name, but I didn’t know any. So they said, ‘Well just take the name of a town.’ So I said, ‘What, like Harlow New Town?’ And that was it: Villeneuve.” And so, suitably titled, the young hairdresser soon found himself blagging his way into the affections of all sorts of handsome women who came in to have their hair done. One was a skinny 15-year-old called Lesley Hornby.

She attracts the attentions of de Villeneuve, ten years her senior, while working as a Saturday girl in the local hairdressing salon. “I started going out with Lesley in 1965″. She wanted to become a model and Justin changes her name to Twiggy. Together they arranged meetings with fashion editors, but they all said she looked too young. He sets about promoting her look with great success. Eventually she got her break, within six months of meeting, Twiggy was on the front cover of every magazine. She is declared ‘the face of 1966′ by the Daily Express. Twiggy is photographed by Vogue, flown to New York, and becomes a recognisable fashion icon throughout the world.

“A lot of tap dancing went on,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I had a lot of front, but I had a lot of taste as well. I’d only let her do the good stuff. We exploded, we were like the biggest names. It was Mick and Keith, John and Paul, and Justin and Twigs. At one point I got through 23 cars in 12 months, Ferraris the lot. I had a domestic staff, five of them: cook, butler, chauffeur. Ridiculous, but I don’t regret a minute of it.”

It occurred in the early Seventies, when the pair had been an item for eight years, during preparation for the follow-up to the film The Boy Friend (“You remember, lovely film, really made Twigs”). De Villeneuve blames it all on a contractual problem. A script had been arranged, a producer engaged, Fred Astaire was going to star alongside Twiggy and a semi-famous actor was lined up to play the love interest. But then the snag struck: the money couldn’t be agreed on, and he dropped out. So an actor called Michael Whitney was recruited in his place. And, whoops.

“Halfway through the filming she rings and tells me she’s in love with Michael Whitney and I’ve got the old elbow. Devastated I was,” De Villeneuve remembers. “But the thing was, it need never have happened. Michael Whitney never needed to be there. It was contractual problems, you see, with the first geezer. Contractual problems which I could’ve sorted, but the agents wouldn’t let me. If only I’d been allowed to sit down with the bloke, then, well: crash, bang, wallop, two kippers and a bon-bon, how’s your father, done and dusted.” A colourful way of recalling his life has Justin de Villeneuve.

De Villeneuve takes fifty percent of her earnings as a model, and from the dress line set up in her name and the franchises for dolls and accessories. During the early relationship, Twiggy is naïve in business whilst de Villeneuve becomes increasingly extravagant – he takes delivery of a new Italian car every six weeks; Tommy Nutter suits are ordered ten at a time.

As Twiggy starts to become more aware of her earnings, De Villeneuve has difficulty demonstrating his relevance to their existing business relationship. He antagonizes professional photographers by taking up photography and then demanding grandiose fees; he generates a similar response in the film world and is deemed incapable of standing back and accepting his role should simply be that of an effective agent.

Iconic photographs of Twiggy in Biba by Justin de Villeneuve

Twiggy in Dudu make-up advertisement for Biba by Justin de Villeneuve

“By 1973, we were no longer a couple, but I remained her manager. David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane had just come out, and we loved the line: ‘Twig the wonder kid.’ We met Bowie a few times socially, and he mentioned that he wanted to be the first man on the cover of Vogue. I called them to suggest this, with Twiggy, of course, and after a bit of a hoo-ha, they agreed. T

o be honest, I wasn’t a professional photographer. I had watched Bert Stern, a hero of mine, do a cover with Twigs. I was fascinated by the set up: he would disappear into an office while the assistants set everything up. Then, when it was ready, he would return, utter those immortal words, “Strike a pose”, click the picture and go. I thought: “Justin, you can do that.” That’s the moment I became a photographer. 

Twiggy for Vogue by Justin de Villeneuve


Twiggy, 1971. Picture by Justin de Villeneuve
Twiggy for Italian Vogue by Justin de Villeneuve

Bowie was working on Pin Ups in Paris, so we flew there to do the shoot. When Twigs and Bowie were together and lit up, I looked through the viewfinder and realised that David was pure white, whereas Twiggy was tanned from a holiday in Bermuda. There was a moment of panic because I knew it would look bizarre; but the makeup artist suggested drawing masks on them, and this worked out even better. 

I remember distinctly that I’d got it with the first shot. It was too good to be true. When I showed Bowie the test Polaroids, he asked if he could use it for the Pin Ups record sleeve. I said: “I don’t think so, since this is for Vogue. How many albums do you think you will sell?” “A million,” he replied. “This is your next album cover!” I said. When I got back to London and told Vogue, they never spoke to me again. Several weeks later, Twigs and I were driving along Sunset Boulevard and we passed a 60ft billboard of the picture. I knew I had made the right decision.”

Photo of twiggy & David Bowie, commissioned by Vogue, but ends up as album cover for 'Pin Ups'

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In 1973, Twiggy severs her ties with de Villeneuve. And with that out went his main source of income. For a few years, De Villeneuve traded on the old name, doing a bit of interior decorating here (“Some poor sap in the City gave me a grand for doing out their restaurant; I hadn’t a clue”), a bit of pop management there (two of his clients were Tim Hardin and – we all make mistakes – Clifford T Ward). But it was not enough to sustain the domestics. 

“I was used to picking up the phone and making it work,” he says. “All of a sudden you’ve got receptionists saying, ‘How do you spell that name?’ “

Then, in the middle of a very barren run in the Eighties, came a crushing revelation. “I realised that I was only any good at that sort of thing when I was with Twigs,” he says. “It became an enormous handicap, my name. You could feel people assuming everything I did must be a load of old bollocks. People seemed to take enormous pleasure in my fall.”  Moreover, by then, Twiggy wasn’t around to help him make a few quid. All this self-assessment, though, had a positive outcome. De Villeneuve decided to write about the good times in book form (An Affectionate Punch, published in 1986).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/An-Affectionate-Punch-Justin-Villeneuve/dp/0283993464

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1975 Justin weds American Model Jan Ward. Together they have to baby girls, who now have made a name for themselves in fashion styling, Poppy de Villeneuve and illustration, Daisy de Villeneuve. 

Jan (Ward) & Justin de Villeneuve

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Another marvelous scheme

Justin worked as a studio producer for a while, after his split from Twiggy. You can find an entertaining story about this when you click on the next link!!!

http://www.studiowner.com/essays/essay.asp?books=0&pagnum=123

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2007 Justin married Sue Timney, president of the British Institute of Interior Design, at Chelsea Town Hall, they live in Kent 

Justin de Villeneuve & Sue Timney

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Now retired, Justin’s influence on Twiggy’s career was again highlighted when Bonhams auctioned the iconic photograph by Barry Lategan from her first modelling shoot in 1966. It had been arranged by de Villeneuve. The picture, which fetched £5,600, propelled Twiggy to international stardom.

Exhibition in 2011

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FACES OF THE SIXTIES: Justin de Villeneuve With a portfolio full of celebrated fashion shots and iconic portrait sittings with a number superstars of his era and glossy magazine publications, the new exhibition in Proud Chelsea is a marvellous look back at a prolific career. Featuring Twiggy, Pattie Boyd, Marsha Hunt and David Bowie, this exhibition showcases an exclusive collection of de Villeneuve’s rare and unseen photographs. Not only his famous sitters, but de Villeneuve himself is one of the most intriguing characters in British fashion history.

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A beauty shot of Twiggy for Biba’s new range of cosmetics, 1970

American singer and novelist Marsha Hunt at the time of her appearance in the stage musical ‘Hair’, 1968

Twiggy wearing a fur-trimmed dress knitted by herself, over a white blouse, 1972

Twiggy & Patti Boyd for Italian Vogue, 1970

Twiggy & Patti Boyd for Italian Vogue, 1970

Twiggy wearing a peasant-style dress in a promotional shot for Ken Russell’s ‘The Boy Friend’

Twiggy wearing an Ossie Clark fox fur coat from 1970

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Book

http://www.amazon.com/Twiggy-Justin-Thomas-Whiteside/dp/B0006BUYPO

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Justin de Villleneuve, 2006
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Information for this post:  Interview by Jim White, 1995

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/no-more-mr-twiggy-1603492.html

In 1988, I got invited to a party thrown by the model agency that represented Linda Spierings, a well-known model who is friends  with Azzedine Alaïa. I still had my own boutique for which I’d designed a collection enriched with embroidery of Arabic writing that season. To be sure nothing offending would appear in embroidery on the clothes, I’d copied words of a Marlboro advertisement (these were the days before internet…..).

The collection was a success and the night of the party I was wearing one of the embroidered jackets. Azzedine was dancing with Linda, when we bumped into each other at the dance floor. He looked at my jacket and got a huge smile on his face…. I didn’t dare to ask him what I had embroidered on the jacket, but because of his smile, I knew it was ok.

Azzedine & Linda Spierings

Embroidered jacket, 1988. Ph. Carel Fonteyne

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He dares to speak his mind

Azzedine Alaïa has earned an unusual degree of autonomy within the fashion industry. He shows when he wants and when he is ready — not when there’s a fashion week on the schedule. He does the same with his seasonal deliveries. He doesn’t advertise, and doesn’t seem to care one way or the other about editorial mentions, either. For this congenial contrarianism, Alaïa has earned the admiration of many an influential fashion critic.

 So here’s his unvarnished take on Anna Wintour: “She runs the business (Vogue US) very well, but not the fashion part. When I see how she is dressed, I don’t believe in her tastes one second. I can say it loudly! She hasn’t photographed my work in years even if I am a best seller in the U.S. and I have 140 square meters at Barneys. American women love me; I don’t need her support at all. Anna Wintour doesn’t deal with pictures; she is just doing PR and business, and she scares everybody. But when she sees me, she is the scared one. [Laughs.] Other people think like me, but don’t say it because they are afraid that Vogue won’t photograph them. Anyway, who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one. Take Diana Vreeland, she is remembered because she was so chic. What she did with the magazine was great.”

Anna Wintour & Karl Lagerfeld

In 2009, Wintour presided over an exhibition at the Met that celebrated “The Model As Muse,” and Alaïa, who is well-known for his enduring friendships with (particularly) the 90s supermodels, was excluded. (Naomi Campbell refused to attend the Met Ball in protest.) At the time, Alaïa said of Wintour, “she behaves like a dictator and everyone is terrified of her…but I’m not scared of her or anyone.”

 Alaïa also isn’t such a big fan of Karl Lagerfeld. In the same new interview, he says: “I don’t like his fashion, his spirit, his attitude. It’s too much caricature. Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life. That doesn’t mean that he’s not great, but he’s part of another system. He has capacity. One day he does photography, the next he does advertisements for Coca-Cola. I would rather die than see my face in a car advertisement. We don’t do the same work.”

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Short biography

Born June 7, 1939  in Tunisia, Azzedine Alaïa’s family were wheat farmers. His glamorous twin sister inspired in him an early love for couture and it was whilst assisting the famous midwife Madame Pinot, a close friend of the family, that Alaïa learnt about fashion. Madame Pinot enrolled him at the École des Beaux-Arts to study sculpture where he discovered what was to be his lifelong inspiration, the beauty and symmetry of the human form.

In 1957 the young Alaïa moved to France and began work at Dior as a tailleur but due to ill feeling centered on the Algerian war his tenure was limited to 5 days. He soon met Madame Simone Zehrfuss and Louise de Vilmorin who introduced him to the cream of Parisian society and were pivotal in him gaining his illustrious list of private clients. Alaïa worked under the patronage of the Comtesse de Blégiers, producing gowns exclusively for her for 5 years. He then moved to Guy Laroche to learn tailoring and after this he worked alongside his friend Thierry Mugler.

Azzedine & Naomi Campbell

In the late 1970s Alaïa settled in his famously small apartment on the Rue de Bellechasse. From here he ran his tiny atelier as a secret word of mouth concern, dressing the world’s jet set from Marie-Hélène de Rothschild to Greta Garbo, who used to come incognito for her fittings.

He produced his first ready-to-wear collection in 1980 and moved to larger premises on rue du Parc-Royal in the Marais district. When interior designer Andrée Putman was walking down Madison Avenue with one of the first Alaïa leather coats, she was stopped by a Bergdorf Goodman buyer who asked her what she was wearing, which began a turn of events that lead to his designs being sold in New York and in Beverly Hills.

In the 1980s when most of the fashion world was embracing sharp shouldered power dressing and baggy androgyny Alaïa introduced the world to the ‘body’ and to his own skin-tight mini skirts and dresses. Truly a showcase for the perfect human form, his ‘bodycon’ look sat alongside the more masculine power suits of the decade. Alaïa was voted Best Designer of the Year and Best collection of the Year at the Oscars de la Mode by the French Ministry of Culture in 1984 in a memorable event where Jamaican singer Grace Jones carried him in her arms on stage.

Grace Jones

Azzedine & Grace Jones

As Suzy Menkes said in 1991 ”If there were any justice in this (fashion) world, Azzedine Alaïa would be a worldwide household name, instead of a cult hero. It is 10 years since the small, shy, Tunisian-born designer launched the body-conscious stretch looks that have defined the way an entire generation dresses and become the fashion revolution of the last decade”.

During the mid 1990s, following the death of his sister, Alaïa virtually disappeared from the fashion scene but continued to cater for private clients and his RTW collections enjoyed continuing commercial success. He presented his collections in the heart of the Marais where he had brought together his workshop, showroom and Azzedine Alaïa shop. His return to the limelight in 2000 saw a departure from his super sexy 80s heyday and his new look was described as “much more sober, almost Amish in comparison”.

Catherine Lardeur, the former editor and chief of French Marie Claire in the 1980s, who also helped to launch Jean-Paul Gaultier’s career, stated in an interview to Crowd Magazine that ” Fashion is dead. Designers nowadays do not create anything, they only make clothes so people and the press would talk about them. The real money for designers lie within perfumes and handbags. It is all about image. Alaïa remains the king. He is smart enough to not only care about having people talk about him. He only holds fashion shows when he has something to show, on his own time frame. Even when Prada owned him (2000-2007), he remained free and did what he wanted to do.”

Azzedine Alaïa & Tina Turner 

Alaïa’s lack of interest in self promotion is legendary. He never learnt English and even at the height of his fame he was known to show his collection up to three weeks late, long after the international fashion pack had moved on from Paris. Without a thought for producing show stopping outfits or the next ‘it’ bag he is revered for his independence and discreet luxury.

A tireless craftsman Alaïa is famous for his extensive research into new materials and new ways of cutting and shaping them. He cuts many patterns himself and often finishes garments by hand. Alaïa drapes directly onto the body, ensuring the perfect fit. It has been said that once a girl has worn an Alaïa anything else seemed simply ‘too big’. There is always a fit model present in his atelier, available 24 hours a day, a role once filled by a young Naomi Campbell.

Owing much to Madame Vionnet, the great tailleur of the 1920s famed for her introduction of bias cut dresses, Alaïa uses the same lingerie inspired sewing techniques along with seaming and stitching usually reserved for corsetry. Combined with malleable elastic fabrics this allows for maximum body control and sex appeal in his clothes. He avoids vulgarity by utilizing a range of muted colours and expert tailoring, lace is backed with skin coloured fabric to give the illusion of exposure. Alaïa’s garments are created using old tailoring techniques yet he has always taken full advantage of developments in fabric construction embracing modern fabrics such as lycra, jersey and viscose.

Azzedine Alaïa was named Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur by the French government in 2008.

Azzedine working on his famous crocodile dress

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In 2011 Alaïa was asked to become the head of Dior after John Galliano’s departure. He expressed himself to be flattered but not interested in the role.

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Exhibition autumn 2013

Photos by Peter Lindbergh featuring Lindsey Wixson, 2013

Palais Galliera, Museum of Fashion in Paris, Autumn 2013

Designed for the reopening of the Galliera Museum, the exhibition provides the first retrospective in Paris dedicated to couturier Azzedine Alaïa.  After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Tunis, Alaïa arrived in Paris during the 1950s and quickly became a noble artisan himself, perfecting Parisian elegance. He mastered his craft by remaining close to his clients, whom he seduced with custom-made garments in the great tradition of Chic. In the 60s and 70s, he developed wardrobes for famous personalities such as Louise de Vilmorin, Arletty and Greta Garbo.

He followed a creative method that allowed him to free himself from dictates and rules, confirming his talent as a visionary. He was recognised by the media in the 1980s as his work stood out as particularly noteworthy during that decade. A true plastic surgeon who only used his scissors on chiffon and leather, Alaïa sculpted a new body. By inventing novel morphologies for clothes through the simple play of seams, Alaïa became the couturier of a timeless body of work. His influence on contemporary fashion and all generations of creators and couturiers is fundamental.

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Books

I

 A beautiful catalogue of the Groninger Museum, Azzedine Alaïa Exhibition 2012

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http://webshop.groningermuseum.nl/p/13/azzedine-ala%C3%AFa-groninger-museum-webshop-catalogus

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II

Very rare hardcover ‘Alaia’ book featuring breathtaking images taken by Azzedine Alaia published by Steidl dating to November of 1998. Limited edition. 240 pages.

http://www.amazon.ca/Ala%C3%AFa-Azzedine/dp/3882435364

http://www.1stdibs.com/fashion/books/fashion-books/alaia-azzedine-alaia-steidl-nov-1998-limited-edition/id-v_91791/

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III

http://www.amazon.com/Alaia-Universe-Fashion-Francois-Baudot/dp/0789300893

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Info for this post: WWD, A Magazine, Wikipedia

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Charles James - Photo Cecil Beaton, 1929

Biography

Often cited as the greatest American couturier, Charles James was actually born (1906) and raised in England , but began his career as a hatmaker supported by friends of his mother in Chicago, where he sculpted his creations directly on the heads of his clients. Before he was educated at Harrow, a British public school, where he met the fellow fashion enthusiast and fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, whose images later defined his work. Charles was described by a friend, Sir Francis Rose, as temperamental, artistic, and blessed even in childhood with the ability to escape the mundane chores of life-like a trapeze artist.

In 1928 Charles heads for Long Island with just 70 cents and an assortment of hats to his name, after he left Chicago in a swirl of financial confusion. He sets up a studio in a carriage house once rented by Noël Coward in Southampton. Socialite Diana Vreeland is a client; she will later recall Charles  at the time running “up and down the Southampton Beach in beautiful robes showing his millinery on his head.

Charles James at work

Charles James and Mrs Randolph Hearst

His training as a milliner would shape his approach to clothing design. Much as a hatmaker uses a block, Charles viewed the female form as an armature on which to build his highly sculptural pieces. Never afraid to try new materials, spiraled a zipper around the torso in 1929, thus designing his famous taxi dress. To give strength and shape to the luxurious fabrics he favored, Charles often underpinned them with a framework of millinery wire and buckram for bombast. Though his dresses weighed up to eighteen pounds, his technical prowess ensured that the wearer moved as gracefully as a ballerina. Witness the garment that Charles considered his “thesis” in dressmaking: the Four Leaf Clover ball gown, which, viewed from the top, indeed resembled the lucky charm. To create the unique quatrefoil silhouette, James engineered a complex undercarriage of multiple petticoats, over which floated a skirt of cream duchesse-satin, its four structured “petals” emphasized by a wide undulating band of black velours de Lyon. 

Four Leaf Clover ball gown

Because of various financial escapades that skirted the limits of legality, James found himself in 1939 no longer welcome in England. The next year he opened Charles James, Incorporated, at 64 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York City. Virtually ignoring wartime rationing, he began designing collections for Elizabeth Arden and redesigning her couture collection in 1944; their relationship was severed in 1945 because of financial problems .

His impressive acts of achievement in construction earned Charles a reputation as fashion’s premier architect, known for his sumptuous eveningwear as well as his ingeniously seamed coats. “Mathematical tailoring combined with the flow of drapery is his forte,” Vogue noted in 1944. Even the venerable Cristobal Balenciaga, himself a master of cut and cloth, was unsparing in his praise of Charles James, calling him “the world’s best and only dressmaker.” Christian Dior described his designs simply as “poetry.”

Charles James cloaks by Cecil Beaton for Vogue, 1936

In 1948, Cecil Beaton photographed one of Vogue’s most memorable images, eight models in the eighteenth-century drawing-room of French & Company, a Manhattan antiques dealer. Their hair chicly coiffed, necks craned like swans, the young beauties in the composition were swathed in sculpturesque ball gowns of silk and satin, taffeta and velvet. Together, they created a harmonious palette—icy blues and grays, punctuated by surprising combinations of celadon and lemon, rust-orange and petal-pink. Posed against the Louis Seize–wall-panels, each figure emerged as a singularly exquisite study in color and texture. Indeed, if not for Beaton’s masterful lighting—soft shadows trace the curve of collarbone and shoulder-blade, the drape and billow of skirts—the women themselves could have been the rare objets on display.

The designer of this lavish fashion tableau was Charles James, “master of color comparatives, of the cut and fold of exceptional cloths”, as Vogue wrote.

Cecil Beaton for Vogue. Dresses by Charles James

Between the late forties and mid-fifties—around the time the Beaton photo ran—Charles was at the height of his powers. He finally achieved success and recognition, won two Coty awards in 1950 and 1954 for “great mystery of color and artistry of draping”. His pieces were already sought after by collectors and museums, as well as by those wealthy patrons willing to pay his exorbitant fees—not to mention, gamble on the actual delivery of a commissioned design. “Charles James felt there was not enough money in the world to buy his garments,” one client bluntly remarked. His desire to receive out-sized financial rewards for his designs, coupled with perfectionism and his insistence on total control, eventually destroyed him.

Charles James was, in short, an egomaniac. He considering himself an artist rather than a dressmaker, and was so strongly attached to his creations that he felt they ultimately belonged to him. He would borrow back a dress from one client, only to lend it to another; or, worse, loan it out for an advertising campaign for feminine products. At minimum eccentricity, the darkly handsome designer—who was said to have been an excellent model for his own work—might don a finished gown and dance all night in his apartment above the Chelsea Hotel before handing it over . . . if he handed it over at all. he did not let go of his creations easily. He made his clients pay, sometimes twice for the same gown, and sometimes for a garment he had also promised another client. He was notorious for not having garments delivered on time.

Among his most ardent (and patient) devotees were Babe Paley, Mona von Bismarck, the Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers—who steadfastly supported him throughout his career—and, deliciously, the burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee, for whom he created elegant designs for her strip-tease. Fellow couturiers Elsa Schiaparelli (who had to pay) and Coco Chanel (who didn’t) also put in orders.

Antonio Lopez illustrations of Charles James's designs

A perfectionist to the extreme, Charles James was capable of spending thousands of dollars developing the ideal sleeve or a staggering twelve years on a single frock. He would “far rather work and rework a beautiful dress ordered for a certain party than have that dress appear at that party,”  Diana Vreeland once observed. Such obsessive tendencies, combined with his taking investors on a wildly careening roller-coaster ride in his business dealings—in short, promising unicorns and rainbows and delivering absolutely zip—would ultimately prevent the designer from achieving the kind of success his genius deserved.

By 1958 Charles was a beaten man, unwelcome on Seventh Avenue, and mentally, physically, and financially drained. In 1964 he moved into New York’s bohemian hotel, the Chelsea. Here he worked with the illustrator Antonio Lopez to document his career. Old clients joined with his protégé Halston in 1969 in a bravely attempted salute to his career.  Charles attempted to document the creations of a lifetime, whether they were in public or private holdings. Above all, during those final years of his life, Charles James was fanatical about securing his proper place in the history of twentieth-century fashion.

He dies in 1978 of pneumonia in the Chelsea Hotel, alone and penniless.

Charles James at work

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Exhibition in the Metropolitan

          Charles James: Beyond Fashion

The inaugural exhibition of the newly renovated Costume Institute will examine the career of the legendary twentieth-century Anglo-American couturier Charles James (1906–1978). Charles James: Beyond Fashion will explore James’s design process, focusing on his use of sculptural, scientific, and mathematical approaches to construct revolutionary ball gowns and innovative tailoring that continue to influence designers today. Approximately one hundred of James’s most notable designs will be presented in two locations—The New Costume Institute as well as special exhibition galleries on the Museum’s first floor.

Petal evening dress

La Sirene Evening Dress, 1938