The Great Fashion Designers (2 page)

Early fashion was dominated by men such as Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Poiret, who often overshadowed the achievements of women such as Jeanne Paquin and Marie Callot Gerber. This book tries to nudge back the balance a little more in these women's favour, although we acknowledge that the flamboyance of personalities such as Poiret was an integral part of the makeup that made him so influential.

Another important point to make is that the development of fashion—just as the development of history itself—is not a story of constant progress. Fashion (perhaps like history too) has an intrinsic cyclical nature. It looks backwards as much as forwards. Jeanne Lanvin, for example, made full-skirted evening dresses at a time when Chanel was championing short hemlines. The modernist wins out over the nostalgist every time. But Lanvin's very significant success, as noted by historian Nancy Troy, raises important questions about the conventional narrative of fashion history. Perhaps we should highlight more the retrospective and nostalgic characteristics of some of the greatest fashion.

It may become harder still in the future to identify the skill sets of a designer. New technology makes design by computer a doddle. In future, all of us can play the role of designer. Even the once time-consuming process of research can be shrunk in an instant to a few hours on the Internet.

Not all designers have been proficient in all aspects of design, as Dean L. Merceron points out in his biography of Jeanne Lanvin. For years, Paul Smith referred to himself as a ‘getter-togetherer of fashion' rather than as a designer. Jean Patou once famously said: ‘I wouldn't know how to design. I couldn't even if I wanted to, for I can't draw, and a pair of scissors in my hands becomes a dangerous weapon.'

The skills needed to be a fashion designer are certainly changing; there is less emphasis on technical prowess and more on an instinct for trends. In future, more consumers are likely to design their own clothing and order items directly from the manufacturer. In turn, the role of shops will change to become places where customers pick up pre-purchased clothing.

Designers are increasingly interpreters of other people's visions, playing a mercenary role, from Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel and Fendi to John Galliano at Dior and Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga. But this book is not a lament for the lost world of couture. We share the view of Nicolas Ghesquière, the youngest name of our fifty. ‘I don't think couture fits our world … Anyway, I have the luxury of using the couture techniques in my ready-to-wear.'

We have skewed our selection towards the second half of the twentieth century, reflecting our interests
and the perceived interests of our readers. The fashion world has a notoriously short memory. As curator Harold Koda has written, ‘The high fashion system with its seasonal advocacy of the new and an associated obsolescence of preceding styles, perhaps inevitably dismisses, if not obliterates, its own history.' How important is the fashion designer today? Harold Koda says designers rarely dictate. ‘Now you can have so many designers that each one becomes a barometer of a different aspect of our consciousness of the world.' Fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart believes designer pronouncements on fashion are coming to an end. ‘We have entered an era of fundamental change,' he says. ‘Yesterday's recipes for success are no longer valid.'

The designer's job today remains challenging. Miuccia Prada reflected on changing times in an interview with Ingrid Sischy in 2006: ‘In general, designers of past decades had to deal with a small community of rich bourgeois people in France, in Italy, in America, or in England … And so, to do clothes for these people in a way was much easier, because it was very simple. Now, in a way we have to dress people of different culture, different nationalities, different religions, different worlds.' Virtually all designers recoil at over-analysis of their work. Even a name such as Karl Lagerfeld, who has a deep understanding of the history of fashion, comments: ‘I hate the idea of fashion being intellectualised.'

We acknowledge that the very title of this book has an old-fashioned ring about it. Academic research these days often prefers to play down the roles of individuals, exploring the broader socioeconomic context. There is an alternative history that explores the contribution of
les petites mains
, the women who toiled in the ateliers to bring the designers' creations to life. The word
atelier
should not be used to disguise the fact that the big couture businesses of the early decades of the twentieth century were essentially factories: in 1901,
Femima
magazine described the house of Redfern as ‘a veritable factory of elegance'. Only a small handful of enlightened employers, most notably Madeleine Vionnet, showed compassion to their workforce. Chanel, by contrast, was monstrous.

That said, we believe the personal stories of the great names of fashion are an excellent starting point for more detailed reading and observation. Through the achievements of these designers, we see fashion at its most inspirational. The British journalist Claudia Croft, writing in
The Sunday Times
in February 2009, noted that ‘one of fashion's great strengths is its ability to make us dream. As much as it reflects the times, it also provides respite from them.' We couldn't agree more. Fashion is a sociocultural indicator and it is a business, but it is also (to quote John Galliano) a journey into escapism, fun and fantasy. Join us on that journey.

In the nineteenth century, fashion was a game of social status reserved for high-society women and theatre stars of independent means. Trends trickled down, but not very far and not very fast: the sheer cost of clothing ensured that. Women's fashion was spectacularly restrictive. The corset squeezed the rib cage while the crinoline and full-length hemlines restricted movement. Individuality was frowned upon: the role of a woman in genteel society was essentially conformist, focusing on children and social life.

Until the emergence of Englishman
Charles Frederick Worth
in Paris in the late 1850s, a customer would buy fabrics separately, and then take them to a dressmaker to be made up. Worth brought these activities together and created the model for the fashion house that dominated throughout the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first. Although his dresses reflected the restrictive ethos of their time, his achievement as the founder of the modern fashion system remains undiminished.

The late nineteenth century saw the first stirrings of women's emancipation. British tailors Charles Poynter at Redfern and Henry Creed, who both flourished with shops in Paris, had introduced tailoring to women's fashion. But Pre-Raphaelite artists and the Aesthetes promoted a new kind of dressing, drawing on ancient Greek models that followed the natural silhouette. Most of their ideas remained theoretical, but the guidelines were in place for change. Women were also beginning to find a place for themselves in the business of fashion. In the 1890s,
Jeanne Paquin
founded her own couture house, while Marie Callot Gerber and her sisters established the house of
Callot Soeurs
.

By 1900 and the dawn of the twentieth century, the core fashion message from Paris showed few signs of moving forward. The S silhouette, which thrust a woman's breasts forward and her derrière backward, was the fashionable look of the period.
Mariano Fortuny's
loose Delphos Dress, created in 1907 and worn by the dancer Isadora Duncan, hinted at a radical shift in direction, but it was
Paul Poiret
who had the biggest impact, promoting a natural silhouette, loosening the constricted waist and doing away with the more severe versions of the corset. His emergence came as the brassiere received a mention in
Vogue
for the first time.

Both Worth and Poiret believed their expertise gave them the right—and duty—to dictate to their customers. A woman must be guided in her desire for a new fashion, they thought. But couturières such as Jeanne Paquin and Callot Soeurs were more inclined to listen to their customers. The first decade of the twentieth century concluded with Paul Poiret at his peak, inspired by orientalism, which drew influence from all points east.

Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishman from the quiet county of Lincolnshire, was the first couturier of modern times. His one rival to that title, Rose Bertin, milliner and dressmaker to Marie Antoinette, was from a different era, the late eighteenth century. The story of how an Englishman rose from unpromising roots to international renown is one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of fashion. Before Charles Frederick Worth, only women were dressmakers; men were tailors or haberdashers. Before Worth, a customer would purchase fabrics separately then take them to a dressmaker to be made up. Before Worth, clothes-makers were not society figures. Worth focused on fit and construction, the qualities that are at the core of haute couture. He was, said his biographer Diana de Marly, ‘like an engineer or an architect for whom the soundness of the construction was the fundamental consideration.'

For four decades, Worth was the dominant force in Western fashion, developing many of the fundamental components of the modern fashion system. These ranged from the creation of a collection in advance of the season, to the development of styles that typically endured for around five years, and the creation of the fashion label (stamped, at the house of Worth, in gold on silk petersham ribbon). Charles Frederick Worth's apprenticeship in London and Paris was long and hard, but when the breakthrough came with a coveted order for a dress from Empress Eugénie of France, his career was made virtually overnight. To appreciate fully his achievements, it is helpful to understand the mindset of high society in nineteenth-century Europe. The concept of a man fitting clothes to a woman's body was not merely unusual, it was considered immoral, indeed thoroughly shocking. The English, who did not have a word to match couturier, reported that Worth was a ‘man-milliner' running a house that was, so the rumours ran, more of a bordello.

Worth also set the tone for the couturier as dictator, rapidly acquiring much of the arrogance of the French court he served, with prices to match. ‘Those ladies are wisest who leave the choice to us,' he told an interviewer. According to his son, Jean-Philippe, ‘in time he came to have no awe of anything … and to recognise only two higher in authority than himself—God and the Emperor.' He also had an innate appreciation of the insecurities and competitiveness of the ladies of high society. Speaking to the journalist F. Adolphus, Worth once said: ‘Women dress, of course, for two reasons: for the pleasure of making themselves smart, and for the still greater joy of snuffing out the others.'

He was born in 1825 in Bourne, Lincolnshire, one of five children. Disaster hit the family eleven years later when his father, William, a solicitor, went bankrupt and left his family to fend for themselves. His impoverished mother was left with little choice but to find an apprenticeship for her son, who worked at a printer's shop. The young boy, however, hated the work and persuaded his mother to allow him to move to London to gain employment at Swan & Edgar, a haberdashers located in the recently constructed Regent Street. This was effectively Worth's home through his teenage years; legend has it that he even slept beneath the counter. The opportunity to work with textiles gave Worth an outstanding
grounding for the future. Perhaps equally important were his frequent visits to the new National Gallery, within walking distance of both Swan & Edgar and Lewis & Allenby, the royal silk mercers, to which he moved in 1845. Society fashion drew heavily and freely on the costumes of past centuries, particularly for balls and masquerades. Thus, Worth's encyclopaedic knowledge of costume history, garnered from observation of portraits in the National Gallery, stood him in good stead.

At the age of just twenty, Worth arrived in Paris in 1845, determined to make his way in the capital of fashion. He lived on the breadline for more than a year, making money where he could and picking up French along the way. It took him two years to land a job at Gagelin in the rue de Richelieu selling fabrics and another eleven years before he was in position to set up his own business. Worth's breakthrough innovation went unnoticed at the time: he persuaded his employers at Gagelin to allow him to open a dressmaking department. Never before had textiles and dressmaking been brought together under the same roof—and never before had a man been a dressmaker. Gagelin entered dresses to the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in 1851, the year Worth also married the Gagelin in-house model Marie. In 1855, Paris hosted its own international event, the Exposition Universelle, where Worth's court train, unusually suspended from the shoulders rather than the waist, won a first-class medal. Three years later, Worth joined forces with Otto Bobergh, a young Swede with similar skills to Worth, to open Worth et Bobergh at 7 rue de la Paix.