Christian Lacroix

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Christian Lacroix with one of his haute couture models, 2008

Christian Lacroix (born May 16, 1951 in Arles , France) is a French fashion designer, entrepreneur and art historian and founder of the fashion company named after him, which has been run without him since the end of 2009.

biography

Lacroix costumes for Johannes Erath's Lohengrin production in Graz and Oslo

Born in Trinquetaille, a district of Arles in France, Lacroix spent most of his childhood with his grandparents in Arles. These left a lasting mark on style and elegance. After graduating from high school , he moved to Montpellier in the late 1960s and studied French literature there. In 1971 he moved to Paris and studied art history at the Sorbonne University . He began doing a doctoral thesis on clothing in 17th century paintings in the late 1970s with the ultimate goal of becoming a museum curator .

In Paris , Lacroix met his future wife, Françoise Rosenthiel, a Hermès consultant, who opened his way into the fashion industry for him in the early 1970s . He has been married to her since 1974. Rosenthiel's friends included PR manager Jean-Jacques Picart, who worked for numerous French haute couture fashion companies. By Rose Thiel and Picart's mediation Lacroix worked since 1978 as a sign Wizard in the fashion department of Hermès, took in 1980 a job with the French designer Guy Paulin and recorded from 1981 to 1987, the haute couture collection of the house Jean Patou . From 1980, Lacroix worked for the Japanese designer Jun Ashida, who also outfitted members of the imperial family . In 1986 Lacroix was awarded the French Dé d'or (Golden Thimble) for his work at Patou and received the special award for most influential foreign designer from the Council of Fashion Designers of America .

Between 1987 and 2009 Lacroix was chief designer of his own fashion brand, see below. Since the late 1980s he has also repeatedly worked as a costume designer for theater, opera and ballet: American Ballet Theater (1987), Opéra-Comique (1992), Comédie-Française (1995, 2006, 2016, 2017), Vienna State Opera ( 1999), Opéra Garnier (2000), Paris Opera (2001), Brussels Opera House La Monnaie / De Munt (2003), Metropolitan Opera New York (2008) and others. For his work at the Comédie-Française, Lacroix was twice awarded the Molière Theater Prize. A long-standing collaboration in the field of opera connects the designer with the director Vincent Boussard , for whose productions he has worked at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Theater St. Gallen , the Oper Frankfurt , the Hamburg State Opera and in the Theater an der Wien took over the costume design. Lacroix also works with the directors Denis Podalydès and Johannes Erath on a case-by-case basis . For Podalydès he designed the costumes for Don Pasquale (in Paris), for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (in Luxembourg and Versailles) and for La clemenza di Tito (in Paris and Saint-Etienne). He collaborated with Erath for Aida (in Cologne) and Lohengrin (in Graz and Oslo) and Tannhäuser in Saarbrücken . Lacroix created touring outfits for the singers Madonna and Mireille Mathieu .

In 2002 Lacroix was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor . In 2005 he founded the company XCLX, which is dedicated to the design of theater costumes, hotels and interiors or perfumes for the cosmetics company Avon and which he owns alone. In 2004 Lacroix designed the uniforms for all Air France staff in contact with customers . In addition, the design of the interior of the latest TGVs , which have been on the Frankfurt-Saarbrücken-Paris and Stuttgart-Strasbourg-Paris routes since 2007, comes from Lacroix's pen. In Montpellier he also designed a tram line in a marine design. In mid-2010 Lacroix was appointed artistic advisor to the French mint Monnaie de Paris . Christian Lacroix designed the exhibition architecture for the Alexandre Cabanel show, shown from February 4 to May 15, 2011 in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne .

The Christian Lacroix brand

Christian Lacroix boutique on Place Saint Sulpice in Paris, 2006

Flowering time with LVMH

With the support of his wife, his business partner Jean-Jaques Picart and the Dior boss and later LVMH board chairman Bernard Arnault , who became aware of Lacroix through his work at Jean Patou, Lacroix founded his own company in 1987 and presented his first own haute couture collection under the name Christian Lacroix . A Lacroix salon was opened in the elegant Parisian Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré 73. From then until 2009 he was a permanent couturier. Lacroix was known for its opulent, elegant women's gowns in light, colorful - preferably red - fabrics. One of his trademarks was the balloon skirt Le pouf. Lacroix himself, who as an art historian ended up in the world of fashion by chance, was more and more an artist and less and less a businessman. The portability of the sometimes breathtaking models was not necessarily in the foreground. In 1988 Lacroix appeared on the cover of American Time Magazine and again received the Dé d'or . In the same year, at her father's request, he hired the then 16-year-old Stella McCartney as an intern. In the following years he also brought ready-to-wear collections for women (from 1988), an accessory line, sportswear, a home accessories collection (from 1995) as well as jeans (from 1996) and perfumes (from 1999) on Market. The Christian Lacroix house had its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lacroix was - with a few other designers - the epitome of the pricelessly expensive Parisian haute couture. During this time there were Lacroix boutiques in Great Britain, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Argentina, Japan and in the USA.

In 1993 the LVMH Group took over the Christian Lacroix brand completely. In 1994 the second line Bazar was added to the Lacroix portfolio . The company's first perfume was presented in 1999, and others followed. In 2001 a children's collection was launched. In 2002 Lacroix also took on the post of chief designer at Pucci , another LVMH brand, which he vacated at the end of 2005. In 2004 a Christian Lacroix men's collection was launched.

Sale and bankruptcy

At the beginning of 2005, LVMH sold Christian Lacroix to the American Falic Group, an operator of American duty-free shops. Lacroix himself stated that he was not informed about the sale of Arnault. The sale was justified with the fact that the brand "could not be brought into the black" since it was founded in 1987, but steadily only posted losses. Lacroix himself remained chief designer and minority shareholder . The Bazar and Jeans collections were discontinued. In 2007/08, in cooperation with the mail order company La Redoute, a low-priced cooperation collection from Lacroix with women's fashion, accessories and home supplies was available for purchase.

At the end of May 2009, the company Lacroix filed for bankruptcy ; the search for a new financial partner had previously failed. The reasons given for the insolvency were massive slumps in sales, especially in the USA, as a result of the economic crisis . In July 2009 Lacroix presented his last haute couture collection in Paris, for which he used his own financial means and was dependent on participating companies that waived payment. The already presented autumn / winter 2009-2010 prêt-à-porter collection was no longer put into production. Lacroix left the fashion company he founded at the end of 2009 and has since concentrated on his own design company XCLX, founded in 2005. The rights to his name belong to the Falic Group.

Lacroix without Lacroix

In December 2009 , after potential buyers were unable to provide any financial guarantees , a Paris commercial court ruled that the Falic Group should begin a restructuring plan that would involve the dismissal of all but twelve employees and the temporary suspension of the women's clothing division (haute couture and prêt-à- porter). Since the beginning of 2010, Lacroix has only consisted of the licensed business with men's fashion, ties , wedding dresses , perfume, glasses , home textiles and stationery . In March 2010, Sacha Walckhoff, a French-Swiss Lacroix employee since 1992, was appointed chief designer. A men's collection designed by Walckhoff and manufactured under license for spring / summer 2011 was presented in mid-2010. Up until the autumn / winter 2013–2014 season, Lacroix men's fashion was regularly presented on the catwalk at the Paris Fashion Weeks ; since then, the men's collection has been presented in the showroom on Place Saint Sulpice in Paris, where the flagship store is also located. Since the mid-2010s, the portfolio has also included home items, such as paper goods, candles, dishes, pillows, duvet covers, furniture (license from Roche Bobois ), lamps, wallpapers (license from Designers Guild) and carpets (license from Moooi) in the typical Lacroix style Style. A planned relaunch of women's fashion has not yet been implemented, although there are limited handbags, scarves, jewelry, sunglasses and small leather goods from Lacroix for women.

miscellaneous

Christian Lacroix was the favorite brand of the main character played by Jennifer Saunders in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous , popular from the 1990s .

Work as a costume designer (selection)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CFDA: CFDA: Past Winners , accessed November 10, 2012.
  2. ↑ Haute couture star Lacroix needs beautiful things welt.de, November 11, 2012
  3. ^ Christian Lacroix . In: oper-graz.com , accessed on September 30, 2013.
  4. ↑ Helmut Christian Mayer: The visually powerful world of the "Swan Knight" . In: kurier.at , September 29, 2013, accessed on September 30, 2013.
  5. ↑ DNews: New job for Christian Lacroix ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (July 14, 2010). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dnews.de
  6. ^ Wallraf-Richartz-Museum: Alexandre Cabanel (October 21, 2010).
  7. ^ Textile industry: LVMH sells Christian Lacroix (January 7, 2005).
  8. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Steep rise, rapid end (May 28, 2009).
  9. ↑ 5 Questions With ... Sacha Walckhoff, Creative Director at Maison Christian Lacroix interiordesign.net, August 22, 2016
  10. ↑ Sounds like me: Absolutely not fabulous: Lacroix goes bathing , January 2, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Lacroix, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Trinquetaille