Christian Lacroix swaps catwalk for museum

PARIS (Reuters Life!) - French couture designer Christian Lacroix drew on his long interest in fashion history for a new exhibition at the main decorative arts museum in Paris showing how modern creations are influenced by the past.
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The exhibition at Les Arts decoratifs, which opens to the public on Thursday and runs to April 20, marks Lacroix's 20 years in fashion and makes clear the debt he owes to the past.

"What I wanted to show above all, is that nothing is newly invented and behind every one of my creations, there's something that went before it," he told Reuters on Wednesday.

Les Arts decoratifs, reopened in 2006 after years of neglect, groups art and design from fashion, decoration and advertising.

The exhibition displays creations of Lacroix's alongside hundreds of items he picked out from the museum's own collection of gowns and robes from the 18th century to the 1930s.

"I wanted to give the people who come here -- it could be an old lady who used to work in a couture house, or a young girl who wants to get into fashion or a student working on history -- an unusual choice, a subjective choice of my own," he said.

Chosen according to themes like color or technique, there are sections on the use of white or tartan, favored textures like patchwork or distressed materials or themes such as "Hispanism" or "Liturgy."

"In big exhibitions, they normally show the big works and there's never any room to show more humble creations or anonymous pieces of clothing, even though they might be very beautiful," he said.

"Here I wanted to give a place for things like that, which might otherwise never get out of the museums."

Lacroix's work is often associated with a bold and even extravagant use of colors like red and yellow.

But he has always had a deep interest in the history of art and design, since his childhood in the ancient southern town of Arles and he had originally hoped to be a museum curator after studying the history of art at university.

"I had the impression of having passed through all those centuries and when I got to Paris, my treasure, the only thing that set me apart was the knowledge I had gained of painting and art," he said.

But Lacroix, hardly the only designer to plunder the past for inspiration, said he wanted to avoid creating a forbidding impression of design history and hoped to show the living tradition behind fashion.

"Art is not always the big things, Napoleon, great monuments, the pyramids or whatever. What I like is the street, ordinary things, daily life," he said.

"If this exhibition gives you a bit of a feeling of what girls passing in the street were like, the charm and glamour of past centuries, then I'll be happy."

Yves Saint Laurent: Ironic Logomania

Godfrey Deeny Fri Oct 5, 4:37 PM ET

Paris - In a season bereft of logos on catwalks throughout Europe, it was a shock to see a regiment of YSL insignia on the house's catwalk Thursday evening, even if the emblem was treated with a large dose of irony throughout.

Emblazoned onto a cool gray cashmere sweatshirt, partially hidden as the pattern of a jet-black, dimpled trench or, most spectacularly, used in a racy metallic vest, the YSL signature was the leit motif of the show, even as Pilati subverted the logo.

The three letters were a metaphor for Stefano Pilati's reign as Saint Laurent's creative director, which has been a delicate balancing act between deference and subversion.

"Let's be honest my job at Saint Laurent has been to respect the house and all it stands for while at the same time tearing it down," the lithe and ever dandy Pilati told FWD post show.

This highly tailored spring summer 2008 collection also stood way apart from the whole Milan and Paris seasons. In a moment of florid abandon and dreamy nature fabrics, Pilati did not show any prints. And in a month when designers dress women for picnics and fantasy balls, Pilati attired them for chic urban living.

The key colors were midnight blue and black, best exemplified by an absolute stunner of a black dress worn by Lily Donaldson, the best single lesson in draping anywhere this season. Pilati's time at YSL has also been marked by his growing sophistication as a technician – the manner in which he managed to pucker several dresses in an imitation again of the logo was uncanny.

Pilati's own term for his style, "post minimalism," at that moment seemed more than apt.

Stefano's other big plus is his ability to meld art and artifice, fashion and formalism. His staging, for example, was impeccable; as Belgium producer Etienne Russo turned the Grand Palais into a wonderful art installation, where the huge interior space was illuminated by eight 12-foot diameter helium balloons, with the audience perched on cleverly padded all gray bleachers. That said, we were so far from the clothes binoculars would have been useful.

His other obsession was the star, which burst over silvery satin dresses, necklaces and belts.

One could quibble and note that the collection was a tad autumnal, with oodles of jackets and warm, loose pants. However, the tulip hemmed, occasionally truncated, every so often bat-winged jackets were all so well cut and tailored, it would be a minor complaint.

In a word it was the classiest act of the Paris season, and a sardonic counterpoint to the fantasies currently gripping European runways.