The first designer

“Fashion needs a tyrant,” proclaimed Paul Poiret, and with that he identified exactly what was needed in fashion at the turn of the century. From an early age he knew that he was destined for greater things. Anyone with too much imagination and not enough discipline for a normal day’s work must be a born artist.

It is extraordinary that to this day Poiret is celebrated as the fashion liberator of women, since he was interested only in his own glory and the only standard he accepted was his own taste.

Fortunately there were women who had an unquestioning faith in him.

Poiret might rightly have claimed that “I’ve gone to war against the corset,” but his revolutionary deeds had purely aesthetic motives.

Poiret designed a simple, narrow robe with a long skirt that began below the bust and fell sheathlike to the floor in a straight line. With this he created a design that made him immortal.

Compared with the laced, dressed-up beauties of the belle époque, the new Poiret women looked modest, young, and outrageously supple. Hidden beneath her light dress was quite obviously a good figure instead of a good corset.

Having considered himself the liberator of women, he could not understand that the war had done more for women’s independence than fashion could ever do. He still believed that women were waiting for the master to force them into his amazing designs. His hobble skirt, the jupe entravée, did not catch on.

That did not much bother the fashion dictator. For a long time he had seen himself as the sultan who dresses his harem in the most magnificent Oriental designs. He forced his slaves to wear caftans, kimonos, pantaloons, tunics, veils, and turbans. At last there was pure luxury again: colourful embroidery, lace interwoven with gold and silver, splendid brocades, fringed borders, pearls, and rare feathers.

He became the first couturier to develop his own perfume, ten years before Chanel. Artistic designs were printed straight onto the finest silk. This represented a revolution in the textile industry, which up until then had been capable of printing only the simplest patterns on the cheapest fabrics.

Poiret could no longer be called simply a couturier. He became the first real designer of the 20^th century, who left his aesthetic mark on everything around him and on everything he could sell, from accessories to interior design. He wrote in his autobiography, “but I saw her hidden beauty.” To make women look younger and more daring, Poiret not only replaced the corset with elastic bras and light suspenders; he also used strong colours and bold patterns instead of washed out pastel shades and festoons. Furthermore, he rejected black stockings and gave women – and men – the illusion of bare legs by wrapping them in skin-coloured silk.

Poiret constantly raised the waistline and with it the bust; the décolletage got lower and the skirts tighter. In 1910 he invented the hobble skirt, which tapered to such a tight hemline that it forced its wearer to take the tiny steps of a geisha. Poiret found this very amusing: “I have liberated their upper body, but I’m tying their feet.” But he was wrong. This time women did not follow him.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16