Revolt and Ready-to-Wear
French Fashion & Haute Couture
Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Revolt and Ready-to-Wear
In the 1960s fashion stopped flowing down from the couture houses and began to rise from the street. A young market, new materials, rival centres in London and New York and the upheavals of May 1968 pushed Paris to change. This chapter covers the designers who broke with the postwar style, Yves Saint Laurent's decision to sell ready-to-wear under the name of a couture house, the creation of the Paris ready-to-wear system, a famous show at Versailles, and the designers from other countries who built careers in Paris. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
The Youth Market
A new customer
The postwar baby boom produced, by the 1960s, a large group of young people with money of their own and no wish to dress like their mothers. Singers, films and magazines made the young a fashion market for the first time (check). The couture houses, built for rich older clients, were slow to notice.
New centres
London's boutiques and the "Swinging London" of Carnaby Street and the King's Road, and New York's manufacturers, made the case that fashion could come from the street and from cheap production. Paris, for the first time in a century, risked looking old-fashioned (check).
New materials
Synthetic fabrics, plastic, metal and vinyl made new shapes and cheaper manufacturing possible. The designers of the "space age" used them to suggest the future, in the decade of the first astronauts (check).
The Space-Age Designers
| Designer (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| André Courrèges | Trained with Balenciaga and opened his own house in 1961. His 1964 "space age" collection in white and silver, with trousers, short skirts and flat boots, made him the face of the new look. He and the British designer Mary Quant are both credited with the miniskirt, and both claims are argued (Exercise 1). |
| Pierre Cardin | Born in Italy in 1922 and raised in France, he left Dior's circle and opened his own house in 1950. In 1959 he showed a ready-to-wear line for a department store and was briefly expelled by the trade body for doing so. He later built a vast licensing empire (check). |
| Paco Rabanne | A Spanish-born designer who made dresses from plastic discs and metal links in 1966, in his collection of "twelve unwearable dresses in contemporary materials" (check). |
| Emanuel Ungaro | A tailor's son from Italy who trained with Balenciaga and Courrèges and opened his house in 1965 (check). |
Yves Saint Laurent
- The prodigy. Yves Saint Laurent, born in Oran, Algeria, in 1936, became head designer at Dior at the age of 21 on Christian Dior's death in 1957 (check). His first collection, the "Trapeze" line, was a great success.
- The break. Called up for military service in 1960, he suffered a breakdown and was dismissed by Dior. With his partner Pierre Bergé and American backing he opened his own house in 1961 (check).
- Rive Gauche. In 1966 he opened a boutique, Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, on the Left Bank, selling ready-to-wear under his name at moderate prices (check). It was one of the first times that a leading couturier took ready-to-wear seriously, and it set the model for the next generation of houses.
- Le Smoking. In 1966 he showed a woman's tuxedo, and in 1967 he began to sell trouser suits to the public (check). Women in trousers were still controversial: in 1968 the socialite Nan Kempner is reported to have been refused entry to a New York restaurant for wearing a Saint Laurent trouser suit, and to have gone in wearing the jacket as a tunic (check).
- The old rule. A French ordinance from 1800 required women to ask the police for permission to wear trousers, and it was formally repealed only in 2013, though it had long been ignored (check).
- Other works. The 1965 Mondrian dress and the later perfume Opium (1977) are among his best-known works (check).
May 1968 and the New System
| Point (check each) | Detail |
|---|---|
| May 1968 | A wave of student protests and strikes shook France. Couture continued, but the events showed the gap between the world of the houses and the young. The fashion press discussed whether couture was out of touch (check). |
| Prêt-à-porter creators | A group of designers who sold ready-to-wear under their own names became known as the créateurs: Sonia Rykiel in knitwear (1968), Emmanuelle Khanh, Christiane Bailly, Daniel Hechter and Jean Cacharel (check). Cacharel used Liberty prints from London (check). |
| Chloé | The house of Gaby Aghion, founded in 1952, offered luxury ready-to-wear from the start, and employed Karl Lagerfeld from the 1960s (check). |
| The institution | A federation of ready-to-wear makers was formed in the early 1970s, and Paris ready-to-wear shows took their place on the calendar beside couture (check). |
| Couture's new role | Couture came to be treated as a showcase of craft and prestige, with the money coming from ready-to-wear, perfume and licensing (Chapters 5 and 7). |
The Battle of Versailles, 1973
In November 1973 a charity fashion show was held at the Palace of Versailles to raise money for its restoration. Five French designers (including Givenchy, Dior's Marc Bohan, Saint Laurent, Ungaro and Cardin) showed in the first half with elaborate staging. Five American designers (including Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass and Stephen Burrows) showed in the second half in a quick, modern show with a mixed cast of models, many of them Black (check). The Americans were widely reported to have won the audience, and the show is cited as the moment when American sportswear challenged Paris. Some accounts are more nuanced and note that the French productions were well received too, and that the event was a charity gala and not a contest (check). It is a good example of a story that has been polished in the retelling (Chapter 10).
The Outsiders
- Kenzo Takada. Born in Japan, he arrived in Paris in 1965 and opened a boutique, Jungle Jap, in 1970, selling colourful, loose clothes (check). His success opened the way for other Japanese designers.
- Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. Their first Paris shows in 1981 presented black, asymmetric, deliberately unfinished clothes, and surprised and divided the critics (check).
- Azzedine Alaïa. Born in Tunisia, he trained there and moved to Paris in the 1950s, worked for Dior and Guy Laroche and built a reputation as a master of the body-fitting cut in the 1980s (check).
- The pattern. Paris has always drawn designers from other places: Worth from England, Schiaparelli from Italy, Balenciaga from Spain, Cardin from Italy and, from the 1960s, a growing number from Asia and Africa. The "French" label in fashion has meant a place of work as much as a nationality (Chapter 10).
Exercises
Test the claim "Courrèges invented the miniskirt" (or the same claim for Quant) with the six questions, and give a more careful sentence.
Explain why Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche boutique and Le Smoking mattered, and say what sources you would use to test each claim.
Treat the Battle of Versailles as a source problem: list the claims usually made, who made them, and what evidence would test them.
Quick Reference
- Designers: Courrèges, Cardin, Rabanne, Saint Laurent, Rykiel, Kenzo, Kawakubo, Yamamoto, Alaïa
- Dates: 1964 space age; 1966 Rive Gauche and Le Smoking; 1968 May; 1973 Versailles; 1981 the Japanese shows (check)
- Shift: couture sets the line, then street, boutique and ready-to-wear
- Pattern: Paris as a workplace for designers from other countries