Jean Patou
Jean Patou (born September 27, 1887 in Paris , † May 23, 1936 ) was a successful French fashion designer , costume designer and designer of the 20th century . The fashion and perfume company he founded in 1912 still exists today under the name Patou and has been owned by LVMH since 2018 .
Life and business
Jean Patou
Jean Patou was the son of the leather tanner Charles Patou and his wife Jeanne, who raised him in Normandy . He trained as a furrier with his uncle . In 1912 Patou went to Paris and opened a small fashion tailor's atelier "Maison Parry". This year is considered to be the founding year of what would later become the luxury company. Patou's collections corresponded to the European and American style of the time - stylish, subtle, yet, elegant and luxurious.
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Patou came to the military front of the Dardanelles and fought as a captain in the Battle of Gallipoli . Meanwhile, business was idle. After a stay in a hospital , Patou came to Belgium , where he stayed until the end of the war. Returning to Paris, Patou worked on his comeback and reopened his boutique in 1919 - this time under his own name. He was able to build on his previous successes. His clients included actresses , singers and wealthy society women . He had his name patented, embroidered his monogram ( JP ) as a stylistic element on his coveted cardigan jackets, for example, and was thus a model for other designers who adopted this idea. Elegant evening gowns, narrow-cut dresses, the use of jersey cotton, the play of constantly changing main colors in his collections and cubist motifs on his designs made up the Patou style. Patou could neither draw nor handle the tailor's scissors. Instead, he instructed a staff of designers and finally refined or corrected the designs implemented by employees.
The connections of his brother-in-law Raymond Barbas, a former tennis champion, enabled Patou to design elegant sports collections from the 1920s onwards, which were perceived as a real sensation at the 1921 English tennis world championships in Wimbledon . For the first time, the world's best tennis player at the time, Suzanne Lenglen, played with media coverage in elegant tennis clothing with fashionable accessories . Jean Patou is considered to be the inventor of the tennis skirt . After all, there was even golf and ski fashion from Patou. His elegant swimwear from the 1920s became a box-office hit. From 1924 he opened branches in Deauville, Biarritz, Cannes and Monte Carlo and expanded into the USA. Patou himself, a lifelong bachelor, finally named the American press "most elegant man in Europe" because of his personal wardrobe. As early as the mid-1920s, women were able to dress in the complete Patou look. The fashion house even offered combinations of individual items of clothing as an ensemble for sale. The functionality of the Patou fashion always played an important role in the designs. Patous Haute Couture fashion shows in Paris were grandiose spectacles accompanied by music, at which several hundred models were presented. For the target group of young, modern women of the time, Patou competed with Coco Chanel in particular, but also with Jeanne Lanvin .
In addition to fashion, Patou created countless perfumes, including Amour Amour (1925), thanks to its exquisite ingredients (jasmine and rose), together with the famous perfumer Henri Alméras, a war comrade from the First World War, who remained with the Patou house until 1933. extremely high priced Joy (1930). Society reporter Elsa Maxwell invented the promotional slogan “the most expensive perfume in the world”, which made the Joy fragrance world-famous. The immense success of the flowery women's perfume Joy finally saved the financially badly troubled house after 1929 just over the global economic crisis, which, among other things, had meant the complete loss of American customers. After the perfume Chanel Nº 5 by Coco Chanel , Joy is the second best-selling perfume worldwide.
Succession
After Jean Patou's sudden cardiac death in 1936, his sister Madeleine and her husband Raymond Barbas got the company back on track. In the late 1930s, Patou's haute couture division employed around 1,500 people and brought close to 700 models to market. Henri Giboulet created the perfumes of the following years. From 1953 to 1957, the future Dior designer Marc Bohan designed the Patou fashion collections. In 1958 the up-and-coming Karl Lagerfeld was employed as artistic director at Patou until 1963, which, however, resulted in less spectacular designs. In 1964, designer Michel Goma took over the fashion division, whose assistant Jean Paul Gaultier became in 1971 . From 1969 to 1998 the perfumer Jean Kerléo was in charge of the creation of Patou perfumes. Under his direction, fragrances such as 1000 , Eau de Patou and Eau de Patou pour Homme , Sublime and Voyageur were launched. Goma was followed in 1973 by the Italian Angelo Tarlazzi. In 1977, Tarlazzi's assistant Roy Gonzalés took over. In 1980 Jean de Mouy, grandson of Raymond Barbas, was promoted to management. From 1981 to 1987 Christian Lacroix was responsible for Haute Couture fashion at Lacroix. In 1987 the house completely gave up the fashion division and from then on concentrated on perfumes.
In 2001 the Patou heirs sold the family business to Procter & Gamble . During this time, the perfumer Jean-Michel Duriez was responsible for Patou fragrances. His creations include the now discontinued fragrances Nacre (2001), Pan Ame (2001), Enjoy (2003), Sira des Indes (2006) and Coming Up Roses (2008). In 2011 Patou was sold to Designer Parfums Ltd. , an England-based company owned by the Indian conglomerate group Mehta. This went hand in hand with the appointment of Thomas Fontaine as head perfumer, who modernized the classic Joy as Joy Forever in 2013 and added classics such as Chaldée (1927), Eau de Patou (1976) and Patou pour Homme (1980), as well as other women's fragrances from the early days of the Company relaunched.
From the property of Jean Patou's great-nephew Jean de Moüy, the Patou estate was sold in two auctions in May 2015. In the first auction of the Pierre Bergé & Associés auction house, 120 lots with robes, coats, silk linen, bottles, accessories and furniture were auctioned off. For many parts, prices were obtained that were a multiple of the previous estimate. A wool jersey and a ski combination worn by sister Madeleine fetched 105,400 euros each. Among the particularly active buyers was the Jean Patou company itself, which was already planning to return to the fashion sector in the future. In a second auction, manuscripts by the “bibliophile aesthetes and collector” were put up for sale.
Restart by LVMH
In September 2017, the Patou- appointed Supervisory Board headed by the Mehta family the then Dior - CEO and LVMH manager Sidney Toledano as chairman. In 2018 LVMH Designer Parfums bought the company Jean Patou, deleted the founder's first name from the company name and appointed the former Nina Ricci designer Guillaume Henry as head designer of the fashion collections. Henry's first fashion collection for Patou - the first under Lacroix since 1987 - is expected in September 2019. LVMH manager Sophie Brocart was appointed Patou CEO. With the acquisition of the Patou trademark rights, LVMH subsidiary Christian Dior SA was able to bring a Dior women's perfume called Joy onto the market in 2018 .
See also
Web links
Related Links
- Dress from the collection of Jean Patou (English)
- Dress from the collection of Jean Patou (English)
- Jean Patou - A Creator, Innovator and Perfume Magician (English)
supporting documents
- ↑ Bettina Wohlfahrt: Teure Treue In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, FAZ Magazin , June 2015, p. 49.
- ↑ LVMH's discreet acquisition of Jean Patou fashionnetwork.com, July 30, 2018
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Patou, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French couturier and designer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 27, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 23, 1936 |
| Place of death | Paris |