Christian Lacroix

With a background in art history and coursework in museum studies at the Ecole de Louvre, Christian Lacroix could have become a curator. Ultimately, however, he became “couture’s mad pouf-and-bustle man,” as Women’s Wear Daily affectionately called him in February 1987.

Although he worked briefly at Hermès and Guy Paulin, it was at the House of Patou, from 1981 through 1987, that Lacroix first made his name, designing the historicizing bouffant styles. He left Patou to found his own couture house, and his first collection, in July 1987, was hugely successful. As he recalled in his autobiography, Pieces of a Pattern: “We seemed to have uncovered a latent desire for a return to the luxury, playfulness and excesses of haute couture.” Lacroix designed both couture and ready-to-wear through Fall 2009.

Lacroix was celebrated for his “keen eye for mixing colors and fabrics and creating new forms in fashion.” His inspirations have been varied, but one recurring and dominant element of Lacroix’s design oeuvre is his nostalgic interpretation of fashion history. Other strong influences include folklore, Spain, and his upbringing in Arles, a city in southern France, which Lacroix once described as a place “where the past rubs shoulders with the present.” He spoke particularly of his passion for Arles’s “mixtures and contrasts.” Indeed, mixtures and contrasts—of bold color, of pattern, of seemingly incongruous details—are often the elements that make Lacroix’s designs extraordinary.

A love for the dramatic and the sumptuous is evident throughout Lacroix’s work, but his fashion should not be characterized as simply theatrical. “I shall always oscillate between a chaste delight in purity of form and a rapturous intoxication with ornamentation,” he mused, “for couture is both these things at the same time.”