The Name.. Lacroix!

The postwar fate of the haute couture—the highest, dearest expression of sartorial craft—is a favorite topic of the fashion press.

The script is as unvarying and as hackneyed as that of The Perils of Pauline, in which the damsel in distress, tied to the tracks or otherwise imperiled, inevitably makes it out alive.

 It’s generally acknowledged that there have been three white knights of modern-day couture: Christian Dior ,  Yves Saint Laurent, and Christian Lacroix. The last, backed by Bernard Arnault, abruptly left the house of Jean Patou to make his solo debut in 1987—which was, as it happened, the anniversary year of Dior’s retro, romantic, and voluminous New Look. Aware of a situation ripe for symbolism, the press was riveted by the upstart Lacroix.

Lacroix’s couture designs were perfectly calibrated to appeal to Nouvelle Society, those glittering, monied proponents of 1980s conspicuous consumption. “No question, this is the nouvelle couture,” said the ever-opinionated Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s partner “There are two sides to fashion. Yves, of course, is one. For me [Lacroix] is the best of the other. Very young. The sense of color—superb. The sense of theater.”

De trop, O.T.T., baroque . . . even while still at Patou, Lacroix had titillated the front row with his 1985 introduction of frivolous, fantastical, and fun poufs, which, The New York Times observed, “quickly changed—from slinky to effervescent—the way many fashionable women looked in the evening.”
Vogue acknowledged him as the master of “fantasy, fashion-as-entertainment.”

He had a passion for folklore, color, eighteenth-century dress, volume, and lavish embellishment.
He was hailed as a hero at a charity gala thrown at the World Trade Center only days after the Wall Street crash of 1987. The party—planned well in advance of Black Monday—inspired a cover story in New York magazine, “Lacroix’s Crash Chic: Dancing on the Lip of the Volcano,” and it became a symbol of the end of an era. “It was,” to quote Charles Dickens: “the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

Lacroix and all he stood for was also anathema to feminists. “Was Lacroix offering women ‘fun’—or just making fun of them?”
asked Susan Faludi in her best-selling book Backlash. Backlash, of the sartorial variety, goes a long way in explaining Lacroix’s initial success. 

At Patou, his playful, flirtatious clothes had represented a 360-degree change (and change is fashion’s lifeblood) from the body-obscuring, menswear-inspired dress-for-success suits worn by workforce women who, in their downtime, were fitness-crazed and hardening their bodies in the gym.

But Lacroix’s clothes were never meant to be appropriate for corporate meetings or school runs.

 They were fantastical creations made for big occasions and for cloud-dancing on the other side of the glass ceiling. “New social and cultural trends have put the values of the seventies into reverse,” a Lacroix executive told the Associated Press in 1987. “There is a new emphasis on sexual values and individuality.”

Not to mention glamour . . . and legs. Lacroix’s short evening dresses, Time would report, are “so ubiquitous . . . at galas and cocktail parties in the U.S. that Women’s Wear Daily has taken to commenting on ‘social knees.’ ”

In hindsight, the concurrence of Lacroix’s entrée into couture and the fall of the financial masters of the universe seems fated in the stars: The house of Lacroix would never turn a profit. Still, over the years, Lacroix stuck with his romantic vision, and Lacroix-isms remain a vivacious and vital note in fashion’s currency today. “To anyone who might question the validity and liveliness of haute couture,” wrote Vogue in 2008, the year before the company was forced into bankruptcy, “there has for 20 years been an instant two-word answer: Christian Lacroix. His spring collection . . . refreshed our sense of the divinity of rich, unexpected colors . . . wildly elegant volumes, can’t-touch-this technique, and historical nuance. We are blessed.”

Christian Lacroix designs clothes that are glamorous, expensive-looking, and unapologetically dramatic. Such an aesthetic implored fame on the French label, which eventually came to epitomize the eighties through the designer's use of sumptuous fabrics (velvet, satin, taffeta) and overlapping patterns (patchwork, stripes), all of which left buyers clamoring for more. 

However, for such a momentous name in fashion, Lacroix fell into the industry by chance, as he spent his childhood in Arles, France and enjoyed attending bullfighting events, and then went on to study art history with dreams of becoming a museum curator or costume designer. Yet, he was destined for high fashion. Before launching his own line, he was an assistant at Hermès, collaborated with the couturier of the Tokyo Imperial Court, and then joined the House of Patou in 1981. Five years later, he launched his own couture label with the bouffant, or "pouf," a fantastical puffy skirt that soon became milestone in fashion history for its inventiveness. A year later he expanded into ready-to-wear, and then diversified into menswear in 2004.

 At one time part of the LVMH universe, the Falic Group bought the label in 2005. Though profitability was tricky, Lacroix’s pouf skirts, Renaissance-inspired tapestries, and masquerade-ball tulle and lace continued to earn critical praise. However, after failing to get bought out of bankruptcy, the designer severed all ties with his namesake house by 2010. Longtime Christian Lacroix employee Sacha Walckhoff was brought on as creative director. He'll begin designing the menswear line before reviving RTW and couture down the road.