In advance of the spring 2020 couture season, Vogue Runway is looking back at some memorable archival shows that celebrate the art and craft of the metier.
Heritage has become an oh-so-important asset in fashion, but the concept needn’t be associated solely with longevity, as Christian Lacroix proved with collections that accessed fashion history through his own personal history.
Backed by Bernard Arnault, Lacroix’s namesake house was the first couture operation to be established since Yves Saint Laurent had gone his own way in 1961 The designer’s 1987 debut was rapturously received. Here was a master colorist with a sense of fantasy and historicism. Here was a possible savior of a métier in need of a reboot and a sense of youth. Vogue declared the collection “offbeat… Provençal… close to costume… wholly charming.” It’s a description that applies equally as well to Lacroix’s sophomore outing, for spring 1988.
It was a collection that continued in the same personal vein as the first; filled with references to sun-lit Arles, the designer’s birthplace. Again there were allusions to the traditional dress of the region and the fabrics associated with it; again Lacroix mined his childhood memories and dreams to reference a place that was part real, part dream of Eden. Cleverly, the designer’s references were edited and shaped in ways that spoke to his era, the 1980s. The fashions of this time were heady, ostentatious, expressive. Lacroix designed look-at-me clothes that were irresistible in their exuberance. Take Marpessa Henning’s black jacket with sleeves blooming large with pink petaled flowers; Anh Duong’s red dress whose appliqués were applied with the confidence of a Picasso or Miro paint stroke.
Lacroix loved an 18th-century reference and closed the show with a pair of dresses suitable for Versailles, but before that there were bathing suits with painterly patterns, and, released from the confines of a voluminous skirt, a pair of crinolined shorts. Comme c’est mignon!
It was the couture of this era that inspired Dries Van Noten’s acclaimed spring 2020 collection on which he invited Lacroix to consult. It was a partnership, the Belgian said, that celebrated “the joy of dressing up.”
