André Courrèges
André Courrèges was a French fashion designer. He was particularly known for his streamlined 1960s designs influenced by modernism and futurism, exploiting modern technology and new fabrics. Courrèges defined the go-go boot and along with Mary Quant, is one of the designers credited with inventing the miniskirt. He founded the Courrèges fashion house alongside his wife Coqueline Courrèges.
Early life
Courrèges was born in the city of Pau within the Bearnese region of the Pyrenees. He wanted to pursue design in art school but his father, a butler, disapproved of his passion as he wanted him to be an engineer. Courrèges attended École Nationale des Ponts-et-Chaussées. During World War II, he became a pilot for the French Air Force.Career
Early beginnings
In 1945, at 22, after studying to be a civil engineer, Courrèges went to Paris to work at the fashion house Jeanne Lafaurie. A few months later, he went to work for Cristóbal Balenciaga. Courrèges worked for Balenciaga for 10 years mastering the cut and construction of garments.''Courrèges''
1961-63
In 1961, Courrèges launched his own fashion house. For the first couple of years of its existence, Courrèges was known for well-tailored suits and dresses with geometric seaming, clean lines, and the standard knee-length hemlines of the time. His superbly cut trousers also attracted notice. His designs' style was shaped by Balenciaga, with garments that were well sculpted for women.His clientele were mature and conservative women with high disposable income.
In 1963, he began to be known for extremely simple, geometric, modern designs, trousers for women, and a predilection for white, including the "little white dress." His slim fall 1963 trousers extended in a clean line onto the top of the foot. Designers that season showed women's boots of all heights for the first time, establishing a norm that would continue in autumn collections for at least the next fifteen years. Courrèges's clothes for 1963 were often paired with flat, slim-shafted boots to the lower calf, made for him by Delicata. The white versions attracted particular attention and became known as the Courrèges boot, which evolved into the popular go-go boot. Boots of this shape would be a staple of his collections for the next two years.
1964-65
Courrèges would reach a peak of fame and influence with his three 1964 and '65 collections, and it is these collections for which he is most remembered.They introduced miniskirts to the haute couture, popularized pantsuits, and made flat shoes, white boots, metallic silver, and oversized glasses characteristic elements of 1960s fashion. They were still strictly haute couture collections, but they conveyed the futuristic Space Age pulse of the time with spare, adroitly tailored clothes that simultaneously gave women a sense of freedom and suggested deeper societal changes.With these collections, Courrèges intended to overcome the uncomfortable artifice that had dominated women's fashion during the 1950s.He promoted a new, more athletic body type that he felt was more in line with modern women's lives. These collections were so transformative that some fashion writers compared them to Christian Dior's 1947 Corolle collection in importance. Their influence would extend through about 1967, touching everyone from top hairdresser Vidal Sassoon to Coco Chanel, who showed her first pantsuits a few months after Courrèges introduced them to the couture in 1964. Ultra-modern US designer Rudi Gernreich was moved to shorten his skirts to mini length after seeing Courrèges's 1964 work, and both designers were early advocates of bralessness. The designer perhaps most obviously influenced was fellow Balenciaga protegé Emanuel Ungaro.During this period, Courrèges cited architects Le Corbusier and Eero Saarinen and artist Wassily Kandinsky as inspirations.While revolutionary in the ways described, these collections were a continuation of longstanding trends toward less constricting fit that had begun in the 1950s, as well as reflecting youthful trends emanating from the UK. Courrèges's short skirts, braless torsos, waistless dresses, flat shoes, and trousers during this period were indeed freeing for women, but the clothes also continued the 1950s tendency to impose an artificial silhouette on the body via strong, 1950s-style tailoring that some described as stiff, rigid, and soldierly.
Spring 1964
His spring 1964 collection continued to feature his distinctive boots, popularized pantsuits, and brought above-the-knee skirts to Paris haute couture for the first time. White dominated the collection. He presented simple, slightly flaring chemise dresses that hit above the knee, well above the knee when paired with his signature calf-high boots. The previous season, fall 1963, almost all designers had shown boots of various heights, but for spring of '64, Courrèges was the only designer to include boots. Their characteristic narrow cut and perfect proportions continued to win praise from the fashion press. Low-heeled pumps were also shown. His trouser outfits attracted the most attention, launching the pantsuit trend that would change societal norms during the decade. This season, his pants remained narrow but were set on the hip, creased in front, and slit over the instep to maintain a clean, unbroken line. They were paired with simple, well-tailored, geometric-looking coats, jackets, and tunics featuring prominent buttons, low-set martingales, and the pocket flaps that would become one of Courrèges's signature design details. Coats were seven-eighths length. He showed his day clothes with large, tall, mostly brimless, Space Age-looking hats. His trouser emphasis extended into evening, when he also incorporated a lot of bare skin with uncovered backs and openwork lace. These clothes were presented in a traditional, dignified salon showing with classical music and floral perfume.Fall 1964
His autumn 1964 collection advanced the fashion industry with modern, futuristic designs that were unheard of during the time.Trousers dominated the showing, slit over the instep like those he had shown the previous season but with a slightly narrower cut and pronounced creases in front and back.The collection included tailored coats, jackets, and tunics, which were paired with trousers or his version of the miniskirt. "He paired his shorter skirts with white or colored leather, calf-high boots that added a confident flair to the ensemble. This look became one of the most important fashion developments of the decade and was widely copied." His familiar short, geometric shift dresses were marked with a characteristic small sleeve. Coats were narrow. Jackets were longer and had deeper vents than previously. Some were marked with a hip seam. The clothes held their shape via precise tailoring and fabrics of substantial body, many double-faced, with a great deal of gabardine. He showed no regular shoes for fall '64, only boots. The boots were the same height and shape as those he'd been showing since 1963 but with pleatingor vertical stitching at the top of the shaft. As in his previous collections, the white kid ones were the most popular, but he also offered them in patent finishes, suede, lizard, and vinyl of various colors, as well as evening versions of silver sequins or ribbon-trimmed pink satin, part of an increased emphasis on evening clothes in the collection. His evening dresses were as short as his day dresses, but evening trousers dominated. Evening styles could have accents of Space Age silver, metallic pink, metallic green, and other colors, all combined with and dominated by Courrèges's signature stark white, the sheen provided by ciré finishes, lamé, sequins, geometric paillettes, and vinyl. Bareness continued to be a feature, especially in eveningclothes, where midriffs and backs were often on display. The presentation included a model getting dressed from a state of near nudity. Starting with this collection, models dressing and undressing onstage would be a mainstay of Courrèges shows that would last into the early 1970s. The most talked-about hats from the collection were helmet-like squared-off bonnets that matched the clothes and tied in the middle of the chin with a stiff geometric bow. Smaller, tightlytailored hats set on the crown of the head were also shown. Short, white gloves were included with almost everything. The models used by Courrèges this season were famously slim, muscular, and very tanned, striding out to the beat of drums.Spring 1965
He continued with his spare, futuristic autumn 1964 styles into spring of 1965, when he shortened his skirts even more and opened the toes of his signature calf-high white boots. His spring 1965 collection also included flat Mary Jane shoes, a style that would become a mainstay for the designer through the end of the decade. His spring 1965 versions had the same open toes as the boots and featured a bow on the instep strap. Some of the boots also had a wraparound horizontal cutout near the top of the shaft, suggesting an absent ribbon. The open toe on this footwear looked like a horizontal slit or like a straight lopping off of the front of the foot piece or as if the front of the toe piece hadn't been sewn down to the sole but had just been left slightly open, the toes hidden beneath but receiving air from the open end. Other accessories included opaque white glasses with a slightly curved horizontal slit for vision; short white gloves; low, narrow hip-belts; band-edged, squared-off, cowboy- and mortarboard-looking hats with chin straps; and striped scarves to match outfits. The collection was still largely white, but included more colors, including pastels, brights, navy blue, and black, as well as some plaids and stripes. Some jackets were lined in large, graphic stripes. He made prominent use of graphic banding for emphasis, including along the inseams of trousers. His trousers this season sat lower on the hip and were no longer slit over the foot. Pockets were now mere horizontal slits, often outlined in the same color as the banding. He showed a lone pair of jodhpurs in yellow-and-white plaid. His new shorter skirts were given the most emphasis this time, still carefully tailored to a geometric trapeze shape in minimal, sleeveless or short-sleeved shift dresses, many with small, rolled, stand-away collars and lapels. Necklines could be round or square. Coats were similar but with long sleeves. Many of the jackets were of a simple waist length, establishing a style that would become characteristic of his collections into the 1970s. Most waistlines this season were dropped to hip level and marked with a thin belt. New this season were suspender dresses/suspender skirts, miniskirts with suspender-like extensions over the shoulders. These suspender skirts were often in wide horizontal stripes with matching coats or jackets and worn with sleeveless or minimally sleeved white tops. Suits were double- or single-breasted. Eveningwear was in the same shapes as daywear but with sections made to shimmer with solid coverings of tiny sequins. This season's runway strip scene involved a pink wool suit being removed to reveal Courrèges undergarments consisting of sleeveless top, hip-slung short shorts, and calf-high socks, all in a transparent fabric embroidered with white dots. This spring 1965 collection built on the reputation of the previous two collections to achieve an astounding level of influence.Controversy over who created the idea for the miniskirt revolves around Courrèges and Mary Quant. Courrèges explicitly claimed to have invented it, accusing his London rival to the claim, Quant, of merely "commercialising" it. Courrèges presented short skirts in January 1965 for that year's Spring/Summer collection. He had presented "above-the-knee" skirts in the previous year, with his August 1964 haute couture presentation proclaimed the "best show seen so far" for that season by The New York Times. Valerie Steele has stated that Courrèges was designing short skirts as early as 1961, although she champions Quant's claim to have created the miniskirt first as being more convincingly supported by evidence. Others, such as Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian explicitly credit Courrèges with having invented the miniskirt. The Independent also stated that "Courreges was the inventor of the miniskirt: at least in his eyes and those of the French fashion fraternity... The argument came down to high fashion vs street fashion and to France versus Britain – there's no conclusive evidence either way." British Vogue considered John Bates the true inventor of the miniskirt, rather than Courrèges or Quant.
Courrèges's favoured materials included plastics such as vinyl and stretch fabrics like Lycra. While he preferred white and silver, he often used flashes of citrus colour, and the predominantly white designs in his August 1964 show were tempered with touches of his signature clear pink, a "bright stinging" green, various shades of brown from dark to pale, and poppy red.
Alongside short skirts, Courrèges was renowned for his trouser suits, cut-out backs and midriffs, all designed for a new type of athletic, active young woman. Steele has described Courrèges's work as a "brilliant couture version of youth fashion." One of Courrèges's most distinctive looks, a knit bodystocking with a gabardine miniskirt slung around the hips, was widely copied and plagiarised, much to his chagrin, and it would be 1967 before he again held a press showing for his work.