Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fashion
'Fashion is a way of life', Yves St Laurent once declared, and most Parisians
would agree. To their reckoning, fashion is French and competition from Milan,
Tokyo or New York just doesn't cut the mustard. But what few Parisians know
is that Parisian haute couture (literally 'high sewing') as it exists today was
created by an Englishman.
Revolution & Drama
Nicknamed 'the Napoléon of costumers', 20-year-old Englishman Charles Frederick Worth
(1825-95) arrived in Paris and revolutionised fashion by banishing the crinoline (stiffened
petticoat), lifting hemlines to ankle length and presenting his creations on live models. The
House of Worth stayed in the family for four generations until the 1950s.
In the 1990s highly creative, rebel-yell British designers such as Alexander McQueen
(1969-2010) and John Galliano (b 1960) dominated Paris' fashion scene. One of the in-
dustry's biggest influencers, Gibraltar-born and London-raised Galliano moved to Paris in
1991 and became chief designer at Givenchy in 1995. A year later he moved to Dior, the
mythical French fashion house responsible for re-establishing Paris as world fashion capital
after WWII. Galliano's first women's collection for Dior was spectacular - models waltzed
down a catwalk framed by 500 gold chairs and 4000 roses arranged to re-create the postwar
glamour of Christian Dior's 1946 showroom on av Montaigne, 8e, in Paris' legendary Tri-
angle d'Or (Golden Triangle).
The downfall of fashion's talented enfant terrible was dramatic. In 2011 Galliano was
caught on camera casting public insults to punters at his local neighbourhood cafe-bar La
Perle in Le Marais. He was dismissed by the House of Dior and later found guilty in court of
anti-Semitic abuse.
Fashion Museums & Exhibitions
Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, 16e
Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, 16e
Cité de la Mode et du Design (Docks en Seine), 13e
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