DESIGNERS
DESIGNERS
GLOSSARY
bias cut Fabric cut on the cross, diagonally across the direction of the weave, which gives the material fluidity and the ability to cling to the body, achieving a close fit.
bouclé wool A woolen fabric with an uneven textured surface of knots and curls, made famous by Chanel with her use of it for her skirt suits.
corset An undergarment that embraces the chest and manipulates the natural waist level, usually boned with steel ribs or, historically, whalebone, to give a structured and supported look to the bodice. Often fastened with lacing and/or hooks and eyes.
Fauvism Fauve is the French word for “beast” and Fauvism was a short-lived (c.1903–08) but influential French art movement characterized by the use of vivid, nonrepresentational color, bold brush strokes, and free treatment of form, exemplified by the work of Matisse.
Futurism An Italian movement that developed around 1909, which rejected traditional forms to embrace the dynamism, movement, speed, and force of modern industrial life. With the focus on the beauty of the machine age and modern technology, the movement remained influential for artists and designers for much of the pre-Second World War period.
haute couture Literally “elite sewing,” the haute couture house is based in Paris and is a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Garments are bespoke, fitted directly to the client, and made by seamstresses from the drawings or ideas of the chief designer before being embellished, for example, with embroidery or beadwork.
Japonisme The first time a significant collection of Japanese objects had been seen in the West was at the International Exhibition, held in London in 1862. This inspired artists of the day such as Whistler and E. W. Godwin, particularly in the decorative arts. Aided by Liberty’s, the influential London department store, the movement gathered momentum from the 1870s and had a profound effect on fashion into the twentieth century, particularly Japanese-inspired textiles and kimono shapes.
jersey fabric A material with a knitted appearance that has an elasticity and stretch to it, enabling it both to drape and to cling to the body. Originally made of wool, various fibers, including cotton, silk, and synthetic, are used today in its manufacture.
Orientalist fashion Entirely Western in derivation, the Orientalist takes “Eastern” exoticism, and Oriental embellishments and dress forms, and subsumes them into Western clothing. This can include, for example, richly embroidered textiles, Chinese silks, paisley patterns, saris, kaftans, kimonos, and harem pants, which are then reinterpreted for Western wearers.
pattern cutting The pattern cutter creates the pattern (or template) based on a drawing or a garment that enables it to be further reproduced and look exactly the same. The pattern can then be modified to achieve various sizing and types of fit.
punk A movement that emerged in mid-1970s New York and London. Defiantly antiestablishment and individualistic, it has had an enduring influence, particularly on music and fashion. Originally with a strong DIY ethos, the punk look has since been unfairly stereotyped.
Savile Row A street in London and home to various firms of bespoke tailors, such as Gieves & Hawkes. Now synonymous with the “English gent” look.
silhouette The overall shape that clothes give the body, as if, for example, seen in a black-and-white outline, which helps to determine how the visual aesthetic of fashions change.
Zazou A small dissident subcultural movement in France during the Second World War, typified by their love of garish clothing and swing and jazz music. A tightly rolled umbrella was an essential accessory and oversized jackets were worn in defiance of wartime clothes rationing, when fabric was scarce.
PAUL POIRET
From his youth, Paul Poiret (1879–1944) had been fascinated with female dress, draping a wooden mannequin that his sisters had given him, in alternately Parisian and Orientalist fashions. When he founded his own haute couture house in 1903, Poiret was inspired by the holistic simplicity of the Japanese kimono, the Classical Greek chiton, and the Middle Eastern kaftan, to relinquish the corset of early 1900s fashion, which divided women’s bodies into two distinct masses of bosom and buttocks. He conceived that women’s clothing could be supported from the shoulders instead of the waist, and pioneered a draped, rather than tailored silhouette. He also revolutionized women’s appearance through his Fauvist color palette of acerbic greens, reds, and yellows, which replaced the pastel tones that womenswear had adopted since the eighteenth century. Poiret’s taste for the exotic culminated in the Arabian Nights-inspired lampshade-skirted tunics, accessorized with harem pants and a turban, which were worn at his “1002nd Night” party in 1911. His Orientalist aesthetic gained high art status, because it was promoted in the avant-garde illustrations of Georges Lepape and Paul Iribe, and evoked the costume of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which arrived in Paris during the same period.
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Poiret rejected the corseted silhouette that had dominated Western womenswear since the Renaissance in favor of an Orientalist, holistic conception of the body.
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Poiret regarded his relationship with the women who modeled his clothes as mutually beneficial. He perceived women as orbiting planets, who relied upon his sunlike creativity to shine. However, he also recognized that some women, including his wife Denise and his favorite model Paulette, were true collaborators because they brought his designs to life. This was evident in 1912, when the presence of Poiret’s nine models greatly enhanced the success of his European tour.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
SERGEI DIAGHILEV
1872–1929
Founder and director of the Ballets Russes
PAUL IRIBE
1883–1935
Illustrator whose work for style journals helped promote Poiret’s designs
GEORGES LEPAPE
1887–1971
Fashion illustrator who collaborated with Poiret
EXPERT
Katerina Pantelides
Poiret’s sinuous, Orientalist silhouettes liberated women from corsets and lent them a relaxed, sensual appearance.
MADELEINE VIONNET
French haute couture reached a peak during the 1920s and 1930s, with female designers dominating. The work of Madeleine Vionnet (1876–1975) stood out for her unique skills in draping fabric directly onto the body to create styles that skimmed the surface of the fashionable modern, athletic physique. She drew upon Classical imagery for inspiration, seeking to reduce dress to its purist form—many designs appear minimal and simple, their intricate cut only visible close up. She honed her aesthetic at various couture houses, Callot Soeurs in particular, where she learned the importance of quality fabrics and the ways these connected with the body when cut with great skill. She did away with corsetry early in the twentieth century—keen to bring cloth and figure into close proximity, and later made special undergarments for her evening dresses, to ensure seams matched and produced the smoothest possible line. During the interwar period, her Paris salon attracted fashionable international clients, who appreciated her references, not just to art history, but also to contemporary art movements, such as Futurism, in her focus on movement and fluidity, and Japonisme in her references to kimonos. She closed her house during the Second World War, but her designs have influenced countless later designers, from Yohji Yamamoto to Calvin Klein.
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Vionnet’s designs epitomized interwar fashion—using haute couture craftspeople to produce seemingly simple, fluid designs that were worn, and copied, internationally.
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Vionnet’s most famous innovation was her use of the “bias cut.” This involves cutting fabric diagonally across the grain (i.e., on the bias) to make it springy and mobile—it has to be hung for a while before being sewn into a garment to allow it to develop its signature fluidity. In this way, Vionnet’s dresses became like second skins, adjusting to the wearer’s curves and moving as she did.
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CALVIN KLEIN
1942–
Sportswear-led designer, famous for his brand’s use of provocative advertising
YOHJI YAMAMOTO
1943–
Influential fashion designer
EXPERT
Rebecca Arnold
Drapery and a monochrome color palette were key to Vionnet’s designs.
COCO CHANEL
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) redefined women’s fashion through her innovative promotion of simplicity, modernism, and understated elegance. She began her career as a milliner in 1910 and, by 1913, she had expanded her burgeoning fashion empire to include streamlined, luxurious clothing. Rejecting the prevailing corseted silhouette, Chanel’s design approach focused upon comfortable, minimalist separates, neutral color palettes, and the innovative use of jersey, a fabric hitherto reserved for men’s underwear. She borrowed from contemporary menswear, infusing English tailoring, tweed jackets, and sporty trousers with a newly glamorous appeal as active, modern women joined the workforce. These informal garments were juxtaposed against layers of Baroque-inspired costume jewelry and faux pearls, while a series of instantly identifiable accessories, including two-tone shoes and the quilted chain-handled handbag, promoted a coherent “total Chanel look.” Her fusion of luxury with the everyday is evident in the versatile bouclé wool skirt suit: its construction prioritized movement while a gold chain sewn into the hem perfected its weight. From the simple black dress to the sailor-inspired striped top, the garments Chanel popularized remain wardrobe classics, transcending time and trends.
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A sartorial shorthand for both classicism and modern glamor, Chanel revolutionized twentieth-century women’s fashion by fusing timeless, elegant luxury with everyday functionality.
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Chanel’s rare longevity within the fashion industry is encapsulated by her enduring legacy, visible through contemporary main-street imitations and the multi-billion dollar Chanel brand itself. Blending democratic appeal and exclusivity, its aesthetic has morphed with shifting social climates while maintaining a consistent vision. Since 1983, Karl Lagerfeld has balanced the brand’s traditions with the necessity of a contemporary reinterpretation, reflecting its heritage while updating it for a new generation.
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PAUL POIRET
1879–1944
Designer whose abandonment of the corset preempted Chanel’s streamlined aesthetic
CHRISTIAN DIOR
1905–57
Couturier whose restrictive silhouette prompted Chanel to come out of retirement in 1954
KARL LAGERFELD
1933–
Creative Director of Chanel who has reinterpreted the brand’s distinctive identity
EXPERT
Julia Rea
A coherent Chanel identity was established through a series of instantly recognizable elements.
CHRISTIAN DIOR
Christian Dior (1905–57) famously launched what Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow termed “the New Look” in 1947. In his “Huit” and “Corolle” models, Dior accentuated the female body’s hourglass shape, with diminutive, face-framing hats, unpadded shoulders, defined pointed breasts, a cinched-in waist, mid-calf to ankle-length circle skirts, and spindly, escarpin heels, which gave a hobbling quality to his models’ walk. The skirts especially, which used up to 80 feet of fabric, caused a scandal in the press as rationing was still in force. Nevertheless, Dior’s classically feminine look, which he claimed “brought back the neglected art of pleasing” after the eccentric and often androgynous “Zazou” fashions of the war years, was in tune with societal and media notions of the return to traditional gender roles in the postwar period. Although Dior exclusively dressed an international elite, his vision of the feminine silhouette filtered into ready-made and home-sewn clothing. Importantly, however, Dior’s luxurious new silhouette also promoted the renaissance of Parisian haute couture after its wartime hiatus. Up until his death in 1957, Dior promulgated the idea that dressing was an art, and that the female body was a canvas, which could be refined, embellished, and transformed with each new collection.
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Dior astonished and scandalized the press with his wide sweeping skirts that defied the restrictions of postwar rationing.
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Dior’s obsession with silhouette manifested in collections based upon the letters of the alphabet. These included: the H-line in fall 1954, which created an attenuated silhouette by flattening the bosom and elongating the torso; the triangular A-line in spring 1955, which featured small hats and narrow, unpadded shoulders, but widened into a pleated skirt; and the top-heavy Y-line, for fall 1955, which showcased high hats and bulky stoles over sheath dresses.
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CARMEL SNOW
1887–1961
Editor of Harper’s Bazaar who coined the term “New Look”
RAF SIMONS
1968–
Creative Director of Christian Dior 2012–15
EXPERT
Katerina Pantelides
Following the utilitarian austerity of women’s wartime dress, Dior’s New Look heralded a return to notions of decorative femininity.
CRISTÓBAL BALENCIAGA
Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895–1972) reshaped the silhouette of mid-twentieth century women’s fashion, combining fluidity and purity with a highly sculptural and experimental approach to construction. As a tailor’s apprentice in Madrid, he studied couture by copying the designs of Chanel and Vionnet before establishing himself in 1924. Moving to Paris in 1937, he was renowned for his graphic lines, love of texture, and innovative reproportioning of the female form, achieved through fluid drapery and an evolving series of structural shapes. In the postwar years, Balenciaga rejected Dior’s waist-defining “New Look,” his “barrel line” jackets, which curved upward at the hip, effectively eliminated the waistline. His Spanish heritage was reflected through his heavy use of black, which he often combined with bold shades of red and pink, while dresses with undulating, asymmetrical hemlines echoed the lines of flamenco costumes. In the 1950s, his reinterpretation of the feminine silhouette produced Japanese-inspired kimono sleeves and innovations such as voluminous “balloon” skirts, semifitted suits and tunic dresses. He continued to experiment with volume and proportion into the 1960s, inventing the four-sided cocktail dress in 1967, but his profound disregard for the decade’s preoccupation with youth culture was underlined by his sudden retirement in 1968.
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Renowned for their technical sophistication, Balenciaga’s architectural designs radically altered the relationship between garment and body through their paradoxical blend of fluidity and structure.
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Turning away from the mid-twentieth century’s dominant hourglass image of femininity, Balenciaga’s bold, streamlined aesthetic formed a backdrop to his experimental innovations in cut, fabric, and texture. His introduction of shortened “bracelet” sleeves and pared-back collars shifted focus from the waist in order to elegantly highlight other parts of the female form, while the invention of staple garments such as the “babydoll” dress and “cocoon” coat produced a universally flattering modern silhouette.
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CHRISTIAN DIOR
1905–1957
Balenciaga’s main rival in Paris from 1947–57
HUBERT DE GIVENCHY
1927–
Couturier mentored by Balenciaga in the early 1950s; his designs displayed a notable Balenciaga influence
NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE
1971–
Designer who revitalized Balenciaga as Creative Director, 1995–2012
EXPERT
Julia Rea
Balenciaga reshaped fashion’s silhouette through his innovative experimentation with volume and proportion.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) first burst into fashion as haute couture’s wunderkind at the house of Christian Dior. He started there as an assistant at age 19 and took over the helm when he was just 21 years old. After his tenure at Dior abruptly ended, Saint Laurent launched his own haute couture house in 1961. There, he made a name for himself as the enfant terrible of French fashion—he put women in trousers, sheer blouses, and gangster-style suits to great uproar. He claimed the street was his most important source of inspiration. This interest led him to open a ready-to-wear boutique in Paris in 1966. Named “Saint Laurent Rive Gauche,” the boutique was aimed at the young, fashionable women who populated the student-dominated region of the Seine’s Left Bank (Rive Gauche is literally “Left Bank” in French). In later decades, he shed his transgressive reputation to become fashion’s great artist-genius known for grand, thematic collections devoted to such topics as the Ballets Russes, Broadway, Picasso, and Opium. Some of Saint Laurent’s most distinctive contributions to fashion include his “Le Smoking” women’s tuxedo, his safari looks, and his Russian peasant ensembles. Saint Laurent designed for his house until 2002. His eponymous label continues today, and remains one of the most important luxury brands in fashion.
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As fashion’s rebel and then as its king, Yves Saint Laurent revolutionized womenswear and became one of the most famous fashion designers in modern history.
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Yves Saint Laurent pioneered the idea of the celebrity designer and became just as famous, if not more so, than the women he dressed. He and his lifelong companion-cum-business partner, Pierre Bergé, also set the standard for the modern fashion conglomerate, as we know it today. Together they built a fashion empire on licensing deals, which at one time included everything from cosmetics and fragrances, to luggage and bed linen.
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3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
CHRISTIAN DIOR
1905–1957
Couturier whose house Saint Laurent headed from 1957–60
HEDI SLIMANE
1968–
Became Creative Director of Yves Saint Laurent in 2012
EXPERT
Emma McClendon
Saint Laurent taught modern women how to dress with his androgynous and fantastical styles.
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Vivienne Westwood was at the forefront of punk in the 1970s. Her contribution to fashion spans the DIY aesthetic of those early days, the historically inspired extravagance of the mid-1980s, and more recent forays into ethical design. Lacking formal training, she drew on home-learned dressmaking skills to create the slashed T-shirts decorated with bones, sex shop latex dresses, and tartan bondage trousers that became punk’s signature style. Her collaboration with Malcolm McLaren was also present in the ever-changing design of their boutiques. Her later work continued this juxtaposition of tradition with rebellion. Landmark designs include the “Mini Crini” of 1985, which combined 1960s abbreviated styles with the bell-shaped caged petticoats and tight corsetry worn a hundred years earlier. Further collections costumed the wearer as a seventeenth-century goddess or an eighteenth-century gentleman. Her love of traditional fabrics, such as Harris tweeds, is counterbalanced by her use of innovations, including new printing techniques, meaning her work always connects to the present. Her designs continue to propose ways to theatricalize the body, in opposition to what she sees as the ugliness and lack of imagination of mass-produced fashion, which she has criticized for its negative environmental impact.
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Rebellious, improvisational, and steeped in British tradition and European art history, Westwood’s designs have influenced global fashion style since the late 1970s.
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An early example of a British designer who had international significance, Westwood helped to reinforce London’s importance as a fashion capital. She inspired everyone from John Galliano, who rose to fame in the late 1980s, to pioneering Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto. Importantly, her work emphasizes fashion’s relationship to street style, pop culture, and music, showing its importance within the wider culture. Her interest in history and art makes these connections even more far-reaching.
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MALCOLM MCLAREN
1946–2010
Multidisciplinary entrepreneur, designer, performer, and manager, his collaborations with Westwood in the 1970s and 1980s fused subculture, fashion, music, art, and performance
EXPERT
Rebecca Arnold
Westwood plays with Establishment ideals, and her work combines both traditional and radical ideas.
MARC JACOBS
Marc Jacobs (1963– ) has been a major fashion force since the 1990s. His style unites art, pop culture, sport, and fashion history to create designs that are coveted globally. He is adept at capturing contemporary themes within a single outfit, as evidenced in his infamous “Grunge” collection of 1993 while working for Perry Ellis. The plaid shirts, long skirts, and layered styles were controversial because they brought elements of street style and rock music to the runway. Jacobs continues to use publicity to prompt discussion of his work, developing his persona through interviews and social media, and working with models and photographers who connect intimately with his aesthetic for advertising campaigns—for example, his longtime work with his friend, the film director Sofia Coppola. With hugely popular ranges targeted at varied price points, including, until 2015, Marc by Marc Jacobs, plus fragrance and beauty lines, Jacobs’ style is widely disseminated. From 1997 to 2013, he was also Creative Director at French luxury brand Louis Vuitton. He developed its first ready-to-wear line, and revitalized its accessories, most notably through collaborations with artists such as Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami. His work defies hierarchies of high and low art to produce designs that consistently define contemporary fashion.
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Marc Jacobs is internationally influential, combining retro and sports inspirations with a love of witty detailing.
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Although sold internationally, Jacobs’ most famous retail achievement is his series of stores in New York’s West Village. These showcase his anarchic style, spanning his entire range from high-end luxury wear for both men and women to a bazaar-like boutique packed with quirky key rings, purses, and other souvenirs priced at just a few dollars to appeal to younger fans of his brand. The stores demonstrate his ability to design and sell varied products, recognizing his brand’s status as an icon of the city.
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PERRY ELLIS
1940–86
Designer whose sportswear lines for men and women became popular in the 1970s
EXPERT
Rebecca Arnold
Jacobs’ brand encompasses clothes, cosmetics, and everything in between, all imbued with his chic, quirky style.
