“Fashions fade, type is everlasting” Yves Saint Laurent
On the internationally famend Museum of Lace and Style in Calais, northern France, a serious exhibition devoted to the late nice French couturier Yves Saint Laurent is eye-poppingly fabulous. Transaprecnes, the identify of the exhibition, is an absolute must-see, particularly for vogue followers, and an enchanting and distinctive have a look at the work of one of many vogue world’s best designers.
Somewhat little bit of French vogue historical past
The French have been well-known for dressing nicely for hundreds of years. As way back because the seventeenth century – not lengthy after the Mayflower carried pilgrims to North America and Isaac Newton revealed certainly one of his most necessary scientific works Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) – the French had been turning vogue into an trade.
The trendy vogue present dates to the Paris within the 1860s, although it was a pioneering Englishman, dressmaker Charles Frederick Price, who kicked it issues off through the use of stay fashions as an alternative of mannequins to current his creations. 130 years later, on July 12, 1998, the good French designer Yves Saint Laurent created a monumental runway present on the Stade de France forward of the Soccer World Cup ultimate between France and Brazil. Lasting quarter-hour, the occasion concerned 300 fashions, 900 backstage palms and 4,000 stadium workers. It was televised stay to about 1.7 billion folks.
Yves Saint-Laurent was a showman and vogue visionary whose legacy lives on.
Yves Saint Laurent – Transparences, Museum of Lace and Style, Calais
The Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris has teamed up with the Museum of Lace and Style in Calais for an exhibition that focuses on transparency – the best way Yves Saint Laurent used nude results in his designs. It can run till 12 November 2023. A second exhibition (which won’t be the identical as this one), will open in Paris in February 2024.
Seductive, sensuous, and surprising
Born in Algeria in 1936, Yves Henry Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was destined for vogue. While nonetheless at college he received a prestigious worldwide design contest and when a Vogue journal govt confirmed Christian Dior a number of the schoolboy’s sketches, Dior employed him instantly as his assistant. He was 17 years previous.
Dior died in 1957 and Yves Saint-Laurent was named head of the Home of Dior at simply 21 and exploded onto the style scene. In 1962 he opened his personal vogue home and have become one of the crucial influential Paris designers. He made trousers and the tuxedo (Le Smoking in France) trendy for ladies, created Mondrian-inspired shift attire and lots of extra seems to be that outlined the fashions of the Sixties till he retired in 2002 and which proceed long gone his demise. One among his most enduring themes was that of transparency.
Clear materials had been outstanding in his late 1960’s collections. Generally his designs had been seen as scandalous and surprising as he pushed couture to new extremes however finally influenced fashions of the late 20th century and into the 21st century. A flick by way of photographs of robes worn by Hollywood glitterati at massive occasions this 12 months reveals simply how a lot the clear look continues to be an enormous theme.
An astounding assortment
The exhibition is astounding – some 60 unique outfits (10 of which belong to the Museum), unique sketches, assortment boards, swatches of fabric and invoices give an intimate window to the designs. Great images of fashions and shoppers reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve carrying Saint-Laurent, along with anecdotes plus catwalk movie footage convey to life the designer’s creations in a approach that also shocks at instances. However you it’s clear simply how extremely subtle the designs had been and the way the beautiful tailoring that made him the King of vogue for many years. I may simply think about Girl Gaga or Dua Lipa carrying absolutely anything and all the things within the present. From topless blouses to barely coated bottoms in attractive night robes utilizing lace and sheer supplies.
“Nothing is extra lovely than a unadorned physique,” the late couturier as soon as declared.
Demure – and decadent
“Transparences” presents an unbelievable window into the world of certainly one of France’s prime designers exhibiting how he labored to ‘reveal’ the physique of the lady carrying his costume with each magnificence – and audacity.
Clothes that look demure from the entrance, astonish while you see the again, the derriere barely coated by sheer Chantilly lace. Sublimely reduce robes with bodice inserts, night and day put on that pushed the boundaries of design and required a daring buyer, although these outfits had been impactful, you had been unlikely to see many ladies carrying the extra daring costumes out in public. The Nude Costume of 1968, made solely of clear chiffon supplied ‘modesty’ within the type of ostrich feathers. Even in 2010 when French mannequin/actress Laetita Casta wore a clear 1968 Saint-Laurent costume – it precipitated a sensation. Yves Saint Laurent wrote: “A nude lady’s physique, that I’ve to decorate with out hindering the liberty of her pure actions. In brief, my career is a loving dialogue with this bare lady, utilizing all of the magic of my rolls of cloth.”
That is an excellent exhibition, an astonishing assortment and an enchanting window into French haute-couture and vogue historical past.
Calais Museum of Lace and Style
Calais turned well-known for its lace making within the 19th Century when English lace makers, well-known for his or her lacemaking, smuggled certainly one of their new-fangled looms into France and arrange store at Saint-Pierre only a stone’s throw from the museum. The Anglo-French collaboration was immensely profitable and utterly reworked the French lace making trade which had beforehand been handmade solely. Calais lace and tulle turned famend, desired by the wealthy, well-known and royalty, and the lace making trade in Calais employed some 40,000 staff in its heyday.
Calais Lace
Immediately Calais continues to be an necessary centre for the manufacturing of lace and is far wanted. Shoppers of Calais lace embody Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier, Lacroix and Calvin Klein, and nearly all of the lace produce is exported to international locations world wide for use within the manufacturing of marriage ceremony attire and lingerie.
The museum is positioned in a 19th Century lace manufacturing unit renovated by the architects who designed Jean-Paul Gaultier’s HQ and the Champollion Museum in Figeac. Within the huge museum galleries, you may uncover the historical past of lace making. From the handmade lace of the 16th Century proper as much as trendy instances. Attractive vintage attire with lace collars, bodices, and petticoats and as much as the minute designer haut couture, brocade robes, velvet frock coats and rolls of beautiful, delicate lace in all colors are on present.
The museum additionally has a singular assortment of 9 large 19th century industrial looms. 5 of them are nonetheless working – and making lace to today.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Exhibition Yves Saint Laurent: Transparences – From June twenty fourth to November twelfth, 2023
Cité de la dentelle et de la mode (Museum for Lace and Style) 135 quai du Commerce – 62100 Calais (about 10 minutes from Calais car-ferry port – nicely value a detour.
Open each day from 10am to 6pm (5pm from 1 November/closed Tuesdays)
On website: restaurant, fabulous store, and useful resource centre.
See the Museum web site for opening instances: cite-dentelle.fr
Discover out extra about this distinctive exhibition at: calais-cotedopale.co.uk/yves-saint-laurent
Uncover Calais and the Opal Coast: calais-cotedopale.co.uk
