Source: Beijing Youth Daily
Atlas
Karl Lagerfeld
Madame de Pompadour promoted baroque court dress
Kenzo Takada
In Kenzo Takada's early designs, elements such as floral drawings and stitching were everywhere
Maria Garcia Chloe
Maria's famous work was a T-shirt printed with the words "We should all be feminists."
◎ Tian Mengyuan
Kenzo Takada, a famous Japanese designer and founder of the international fashion brand kenzo, died on October 4 at the age of 81 in a hospital in Paris after weeks of battling complications of COVID-19. The fashion industry has called the designer "the first Japanese designer to break into the Parisian fashion scene", and after him, Japanese designers such as Yamamoto Kansai, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo have brought a fresh Japanese trend to the Parisian fashion scene.
When it comes to fashion, people always trace their roots to the Western world: in 18th-century France, the court aesthetic once dominated the pace of fashion. After the French Revolution, British designer Charles Frédéric Voss opened the first high-end fashion store in Paris at 7 Heping Road, first proposed the concept of "designer brand" and held a fashion debut. After that, France embarked on the road to the capital of haute couture. In the 1920s, legendary designers such as Gabriel Chanel, Christine Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent labeled Paris as fashion culture, and since then, fashion has ceased to be the feathers of the royal family's costumes, but has been transformed into lace on the jeans of street girls.
The hardcore position of Paris in the fashion industry has made the designers of Paris spontaneously form a smaller "fashion circle", and it is not easy to integrate into this circle, but there are so many foreigners who have broken out of their own world in Paris with their full talents: Kenzo Takada went to Paris at the age of 25 with a demolition compensation and bravely infected the high-cold Paris with her enthusiasm, freedom and taste; Maria Garcia Chlorie, the first female helmsman of Dior, expressed her attitude with fashion freedom. The famous "We should all be feminists" t-shirt on the debut attracted a large number of young people eager to live their true selves; The Fashion Emperor Carl Lagerfeld used talent and diligence to help Chanel come back to life – although he did not like to be called "hardworking designer", his famous saying was "I will die if I don't work".
Do you think the fashion industry has nothing to do with you? wrong!
The seemingly niche and cold fashion circle actually implicitly controls the dressing of ordinary people, so how was fashion born? Tracing the history of fashion, there are several important time nodes. At the French court in the 18th century, fashion began to emerge, Madame de Pompadour and Louis XVI's beheaded queen Marie Antonnet pushed court dress from Baroque art to the Rococo trend, Marie Antonnet also had a royal tailor Rose Bertan specially designed for the queen to design her own costumes, Rose was considered the elder of the haute couture industry, and the first person to label the word "fashion" on French culture.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution, the fashion industry fell silent for several decades, until 1858, when the British designer Charles Frederick Voss, in partnership with the wealthy Swedish businessman Otto Bobef, opened the first high-fashion store in Paris, "Voss and Bobef", at 7 Rue de la Heping. It is interesting to note that the British designer pioneered the concept of "designer brand" and it was he who helped Paris to become the capital of haute couture. Not only that, but Charles was also the originator of the fashion show, he held the first fashion show in history, let the real person show off the clothes he designed, and the first model he found, Mary Vernet, later even became his wife.
Since then, Paris, France has become the germination place of haute couture customization, and it has naturally become the fashion capital. In the 1920s, fashion officially entered the modern era, legendary designers such as Gabriel Chanel, Christine Dior and Yves Saint Laurent were born, and fashion was no longer the green feathers on the royal family's costumes, but into the lace on the jeans of street girls.
Talking about this, you will find that the development of the fashion industry is mostly related to the fashion capital of Paris. Indeed, Paris has bred a lot of excellent fashion designers, they can be described as another smaller "fashion circle" in the global fashion circle, it is not easy to integrate into this circle, but there are so many foreign designers with their full talent, so that elegant "proud" Parisians also have to be convinced of them.
Japanese designer Kenzo Takada
Founder of international fashion brand kenzo
"Fashion is like eating, you shouldn't stick to the same menu."
On October 4, 2020, the famous Japanese designer Kenzo Takada passed away at the age of 81. After learning of Takada's death, Lvmh Group Chairman Bernard Arna Arnault, who founded the international fashion brand Kenzo, was acquired by moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton in 1993, saying in a eulogy: "It is a pity to hear this sad news. Kenzo Takada injected a poetic lightness and a sweet, free tone into fashion that inspired many of his later designers and has always been preserved in the kenzo fashion house. ”
Kenzo Takada was born in 1939 in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, to six siblings and his parents running a hotel. In 1958, Takada dropped out of kobe city Chinese university against his family's objections and entered the Tokyo Bunka Fashion Institute, becoming one of the first male students enrolled in the fashion college.
In a 2019 interview with the Financial Times, Takada said of the experience: "I was told that it was impossible for a Japanese man to work in the fashion industry in Paris... Men were not allowed to enter design schools, and Japanese society in the 1850s did not accept creative things. On top of that, my parents objected to me working in fashion. ”
However, the opposition of society and parents did not cause Takada to abandon his ideals. In 1964, Takada's apartment in Japan was demolished in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics, and Takada took the returned rent to Paris to embark on his own journey of exotic fashion.
At first, Takada did not want to stay in Paris for a long time, his idea was to stay in the fashion capital for at most 6 months, because the people around him told him that "Japanese men can't enter the Paris fashion industry", fortunately, he found a job as a hand painter, and in the next 5 years, Takada sketched design sketches for haute couture houses and textile companies, and also drew illustrations for fashion magazines, while also selling his own works, through efforts to prove to the people around him that his dream was not a whim.
In 1970, Takada used his savings to open a fashion house in Paris, named "Jungle of Japan" and held his first fashion show at the Vivian Gallery, north of the Royal Palace in Paris. People in the industry remember Takata's fashion show: the walls are painted with brilliant wildflowers, and the models don't move around very gracefully – they jump or walk fast, lightly and interestingly showing the enthusiasm and vitality in the Japanese designer's mind.
After that, Takada hit the iron while it was hot, seized the opportunity of the French "elle" fashion magazine to discover new people, and became the designer of the bon magique brand. In his early designs, elements such as floral drawings, kimonos, and stitching were ubiquitous, a style that borrowed from the pattern of "laying out natural elements in Japanese art." In 1976, Takada renamed the brand "kenzo", and his brand was not only recognized by the Parisian fashion industry, but also attracted the attention of young people around the world, the brand's price was close to the people, the color of the clothing was bold and dynamic, and it was in stark contrast to the past fashion style.
As can be seen from Takada's design style, he himself is a very enthusiastic and interesting person. In 1978 and 1979, he set the venue for his fashion show in a circus, where he rode an elephant himself, while other performers rode horses in transparent uniforms to show people the costumes. Gene Presman, former co-ceo of American luxury department store Barnes, recalls that the unique fashion show was "a legend, and tickets were hard to come by."
Kenzo Takada's bravery opened the door for Japanese fashion in Paris, and after him, more and more Japanese designers came to Paris to expand their territory, such as Yamamoto Kansai, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. Takata's designs brought a new kind of creativity to Paris in the 80s, combining Japanese culture and Parisian elements from his hometown to create a colorful fashion kingdom.
Italian designer
maria grazia chiuri
Dior's first female helmsman
"Fashion is not just about your appearance, it's about how you feel and what you think."
Dior Fashion House has been in the fashion world for more than 70 years, after an era of designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Boon, Chian Frank Ferret, John Galliano and Rav Simon, before welcoming its first female creative director, Maria Garcia Çôre, in 2016. As soon as she took office, Maria let everyone know that she was a feminist.
Without him, at the dior Spring/Summer 2017 ready-to-wear series launch show, Maria's work included a t-shirt printed with a faded slogan that read: "We should all be feminists." "Maria is using her fashion work to convey her attitude to the world.
Maria was born in Rome, Italy, in 1964 to a tailor whose mother was a seamstress and whose father worked in the army. At that time, due to the openness of Italian society and the need for household expenses, the women of Maria's family— including her grandmother — had to work to support themselves. "I am in a very normal family, and it is normal for women to find jobs and create a future for themselves." In a 2020 interview with Elle, Maria recalled, "My family often forced me to learn because they never had the opportunity to: for them, learning meant freedom. I never felt like I couldn't do a thing because I was a girl. ”
Prior to becoming Dior's creative director, Maria was with her best friend Bill Paul Piccioli, first joining Fendi to create the "baguette" handbag, the fashion trend that swept the fashion world at the time, and then jumping to Valentino, where they became the brand's creative director.
During Valentino's tenure, Maria designed a classic shoe , rockstud " stud shoes " , marked by sexy pointed toes and densely arranged square studs , with a pair of star supermodels in hand ; in addition to this pair of shoes , Maria's dream fairy dress series is also out of the limelight in the fashion world – the tulle of the dress is mixed with embroidery and ornamentation on valentine's Spring/Summer 2016 couture show, which is very eye-catching.
It can be seen that Maria's designs are very "feminine", she brought lightness and fantasy into the fashion world, with a pure romantic feminist design style, which made the dior fashion house that was in trouble at that time bright and threw an olive branch to her.
Maria's feminist manifesto also came at an opportune time – with the opening up of the times, women's voice in the world has been constantly improving, and the proportion of women in all walks of life has increased. The values of women in the new era are quietly subverted, and Maria's distinct attitude has attracted a large number of young people who are eager to live their true posture, helping Dior, a classic brand, to achieve rejuvenation and rapidly driving sales growth.
Maria didn't just shout loudly, the first thing she did after Dior took office was to hire a female photographer, she told the editor of Elle: "A lot of fashion events are about hiring male photographers to shoot, I think women look at another woman in a completely different way than men, if Dior wants 'femininity', then I want to look at femininity in women's eyes." For me, it's just as important to work with women with different backgrounds and aesthetic tastes. ”
Maria wants her daughter Rachel to study in London, where Rachel will have the opportunity to take courses in areas such as gender studies. Maria herself has been reading books on gender, and there are many young women around her, she is willing to listen to their opinions and ideas, and when designing beautiful fashion for women, Maria also provides them with a means of expressing feminist ideas and values.
German designer Karl Lagerfeld
Julius Caesar of fashion
"I could die if I don't work."
If you know a thing or two about the fashion world, you've probably heard the title of "Julius Caesar of fashion": Karl Lagerfeld, the "model worker" designer of the fashion industry, who makes 8 collections of clothing for Chanel and 5 series of clothing for Fendi every year, while also designing for his own eponymous brand.
Karl has never been absent from any of the brand's big shows since 1983, when he was asked about retirement plans in an interview with Vogue TV in 2012, but the word "retirement" doesn't seem to be in Carr's dictionary, and he even said: "Why should I stop working?" I might die if it didn't work, and then it was all over. The "model worker" designer also worked until the last minute, as he said, and before his death, he was still communicating with Fendi's team about fendi's fall/winter 2019 couture show.
Born in 1933 in a small village in Germany, Karl recalls in the documentary Carl Lagerfeld: The Lonely Fashion Emperor, who grew up in the countryside, longed for the metropolis, especially the glorious France of the 17th century— not that he liked France much, but that his aesthetic was very close to the fashion country of France. Carl's family moved to France when he was 14 years old, where he began working in the Parisian fashion scene after completing his studies in France.
Carr's image in the fashion world is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, he has worn a pair of sunglasses for decades, because he "likes to observe others, but does not like to be observed by others"; wearing a slim suit suit - the world knows that he lost 42 kilograms in 13 months in order to wear his favorite Dior Aure suit, and never rebounded; coupled with open-finger gloves and a white ponytail that fell behind his head, the image of the fashion emperor is domineering.
Although Karl's personal style of dressing is very strong, the fashion trend he leads is by no means static. Karl opened the decadent Coco Chanel Fashion House in 1983 and successfully revived the brand. At that time, Chanel's founder, Gabriel Chanel, had been dead for 12 years, and the brand had almost completely lost its vitality and was in urgent need of finding its next helmsman. Carr, chairman of the Chanel Group, approached Carl, and Karl gladly accepted the challenge, but the first thing he did after taking office was questioned from the outside and within the company: he intended to abandon Chanel's previous H-silhouette suit, shrink the jacket, shorten the skirt, and appropriately add sports and rock elements. It ran counter to Gabriel Chanel's design, but it turned out that Karl had made the right decision – he reinvented the novel Chanel into modern elegance, and chanel is now one of the most successful luxury brands in the world.
Carl's fashion show is also fond of industry insiders, he is keen to make the show into a variety of scenes according to the theme: the theme is autumn, the runway is a forest covered with fallen leaves; the theme is the ocean, the show uses hundreds of tons of white sand to create a mini beach in the Grand Palais de Paris, the model walks barefoot and high heels in front of the audience; he also arranged the runway into a carousel playground, Chanel's classic handbags, shoes and hats instead of the spinning Trojan horse... Scenes such as supermarkets, casinos, restaurants and art galleries have all been recreated on his runway.
After Carl's death in 2019, his deputy, Virginia, took over his job at Chanel. The chanel Couture 2020 continued Karl's style, with the Grand Palais in Paris being arranged as a circular library, with models moving around in silence and elegance, as if commemorating the late emperor of fashion.
Editor-in-Charge: Su Shan