Artist Info
Jean Patou
Celia Bertin once observed that if a woman was attractive, Jean Patou “didn’t care whether she was a mannequin, a star at the Casino de Paris, or a duchess.” Patou had a widespread reputation as a womanizer, a gambler, and—as Elsa Maxwell recalled in her autobiography—“the most flamboyant figure ever to invade the world of couture.” The charismatic Patou, she noted, “possessed the fastest cars, boats and women on the Continent.”
Jean Patou was born the son of a leather tanner in 1880. He first tried working in the fur industry and then, between 1910 and 1912, struggled to launch a successful dressmaking shop. In 1912, he opened the small couture house Maison Parry, and by 1914 was planning to open a house under his own name. However, Patou’s career was interrupted by the First World Wars. He reestablished his business following the war, in 1919.
In 1924, Patou made international headlines when he visited the United States to study the “American Diana”—the name he gave to his ideal of the fashionable, young, American woman. He ultimately chose several girls to travel back with him to Paris, as his models. He felt that the slender, athletic “Diana” was better-suited for some of his designs than the more curvaceous “French Venus.” As a scheme concocted to attract buyers, clients, and publicity, it was brilliantly successful.
Also a leading sportswear designer, Patou dressed tennis star Suzanne Lenglen. He was fiercely competitive. According to fashion editor Edna Woolman Chase, “Patou considered his real blood enemy to be Chanel,” and when hemlines fell at the end of the 1920s, it was Patou, not Chanel, “who fired the first gun.” This seemingly revolutionary act halted years of dominance for short skirts; Bertin referred to it as Patou’s “crusade for a return to femininity.” Patou was also praised for his keen sense of color, for his ability to manipulate geometric shapes, and—like his rival Chanel—for the sporty elegance of his work.
Jean Patou died suddenly in 1936, possibly of a heart attack.
