Jacques Fath

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Jacques Fath (r. 1950)

Jacques Fath (born September 6, 1912 in Maisons-Laffitte , France , † November 13, 1954 in Paris ) was a French fashion designer . Along with Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain , he was one of the most influential designers of haute couture of the post-war period.

life and work

Jacques Fath was born in Maisons-Laffitte in 1912 into a Flemish - Alsatian family. His father André was an insurance agent, his grandfather René-Maurice a landscape painter. Initially, Fath worked as an accountant in order to comply with his father's wish to also enter the insurance industry. But like his great-grandmother before him, who worked as a tailor, Fath was drawn to fashion. In contrast to most designers, Fath enjoyed neither tailoring nor any other artistic training. Unusual for the fashion industry, he never worked as an assistant to an established couturier. He learned his craft self-taught by visiting museum exhibitions regularly and studying contemporary books and magazines on fashion.

In 1937 he opened a small fashion boutique on the Rue de la Boetie in Paris , which he was able to expand during the Second World War , despite the war effort and occupation . In 1940 he had already relocated his salon to a larger area on Rue Francois Premier before moving again to 39 Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie in 1944. He was supported by his wife, the Chanel mannequin Geneviève Boucher de la Bruyère, whom he married in 1939 and who gave him access to the fine circles of Paris. The couple had a son named Philippe. Fath's assistants in the mid-1940s included Hubert de Givenchy , Guy Laroche and Valentino Garavani , who later founded their own very successful fashion houses. 1947 Fath also turned to the film and designed the costumes for example, Moira Shearer in the famous ballet film The Red Shoes ( The Red Shoes , 1948). From 1948 he concentrated increasingly on the US market. He teamed up with clothing manufacturer Joseph Halpert to present a collection in New York twice a year . In the same year he opened another salon in Paris in order to be one of the first designers to offer lower-priced creations to a broad market in addition to haute couture. In 1950 he presented his first perfume under the name Canasta , which was followed three years later by the fragrance Fath de Fath .

His fashion was characterized by very feminine, waisted cuts that emphasize the hips and playful details, such as diagonal button strips with large buttons or asymmetrical collar shapes. He also had a patent for a cup bra that he sewed into his clothes. His glamorous evening gowns in particular were geared towards the affluent society on the French Riviera in the 1950s. Among his most famous customers were Greta Garbo , Ava Gardner and, above all, Rita Hayworth , for whom he created a wedding dress made of light blue crepe de chine in 1949 on the occasion of her wedding to Prince Aly Khan - an event that generated great media interest worldwide and thus also Fath's name made it even better known.

Jacques Fath died of leukemia in Paris in 1954 at the age of 42 . His fashion house, which at that time was at its creative and economic peak and employed around 600 people, then closed the haute couture division. Fath's wife Geneviève and his son Philippe ran the ready-to-wear and perfume house until 1986, when they sold it to the cosmetics company L'Oréal, which had held the Fath perfume license since 1964.

In 1991 the fashion label Jacques Fath was bought by the French Saga-Bank around Crédit Lyonnais , which was able to engage the Dutch designer Tom van Lingen (* 1962) for the company. In 1995 the state rescue company Consortium de Réalisation (CDR) took over the Fath brand. In 1997 the French stylist Emmanuelle Khanh and her company bought the Fath house from the CDR and hired the designer Octavio Pizarro to succeed the fashion designer Elena Nazaroff, who only stayed for one season in 1997. In 2002 the newly founded France Luxury Group (FLG) around the brand developer Mounir Moufarrige took over the company Emmanuelle Kahnh and with it the company Jacques Fath. Moufarrige appointed British designer Lizzy Disney as chief designer at Fath, whose designs failed the press. In 2003 the French investor Alain Dumenil and his Alliance Designers Group took over the companies of the FLG. In 2007, Dumenil appointed his daughter Laurence Dumeni as chief designer of Jacques Fath's accessories division. In 2010 Dumenil presented a re-launch of the Jacques Fath brand as an accessories brand, with a focus on handbags designed by his daughter. The Alliane Designer Group was dissolved in the same year. Since then, no more Fath fashion has been presented.

In 2008 the French cosmetics manufacturer Panouge acquired the perfume license from Jacques Fath and has been selling scented waters under the name ever since.

Filmography

  • 1947: Under false suspicions ( Quai des Orfèvres )
  • 1948: The Red Shoes ( The Red Shoes )
  • 1949: Between 11 a.m. and midnight ( Entre onze heures et minuit )
  • 1952: One night's confession ( La Minute de vérité )
  • 1954: A Kingdom for a Woman ( Abdulla the Great )

literature

Web links

Commons : Jacques Fath  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Valerie Steele: The Berg Companion to Fashion . Berg, 2010, p. 394.
  2. ↑ Jacques Fath Reemerges as an Accessories Label fashionwindows.net, August 27, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Fath, Jacques
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Maisons-Laffitte , France
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1954
Place of death Paris