André Courrèges -1960’s Space Era designer
André Courrèges, born March 9 1923,was one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century; in the mid-1960s he changed the way women dressed, and did so almost overnight. His designs included angular mini dresses and trouser suits. Many of the outfits had cut-out midriffs and backs and were worn without a bra. These were matched with flat boots, goggles and helmets taken from the equipment worn by astronauts. The stark shapes and white and silver color scheme immediately earned the name Space Age.He is a French fashion designer who worked for Cristobal Balenciaga and opened his own house in 1961.
André Courrèges brought us the triangle shaped shift dress as the defining silhouette for the 60’s. He privileged geometric forms and primary colours and worshiped the modernist architect and designer Le Corbusier.
For grand occasions he gave them tops in sequins or in sheer organdy appliquéd with his own particular flowers — flat-petalled daisies. He accessorised them with chin-tied baby bonnets, slit-eyed opaque white sunglasses (later adorned with gigantic false eyelashes), short boots and wrist-length white kid gloves.
The miniskirt was introduced because Courrèges wished to put women into what he described as a “total-freedom suit”, a sort of ribbed-knit body stocking. But because not all women have perfect bottoms, and because he wished to introduce an element of fluidity, he topped these suits with a gaberdine hipster miniskirt. His battle cry was “elongate the legs” and over several seasons his skirts became shorter and shorter.
The hat that Audrey used in “How to Steal a Million”, 1965, was, according to Givenchy’s Hubert, the true inspiration for the futuristic style of André Courrèges.
Courrèges thought the designer, not the client, knew best, and proudly refused to negotiate changes in his styles with the Duchess of Windsor. He liked to compare his atelier to a laboratory.
In 1967, having already bared the leg, arm and midriff, Courrèges began to experiment with transparency, making minidresses and jumpsuits in see-through organza ornamented with judiciously placed vinyl or sequinned flowers and circles. One pair of pants was shown with no top at all, just a pair of “flower power” patches.
His fame and his power in the fashion industry endured throughout the 1960s, but in the 1970s when fashion became floppy and folksy, Courrèges went out of style. He did, however, branch out into perfumes, creating several fragrances, including Eau de Courrèges, Empreinte and Courrèges pour homme.
A tall, thin, angular man, Courrèges had none of the egomania generally associated with the world in which he moved. On the contrary, he was shy, quiet and diffident, a man who saw himself as an artist rather than a businessman. When his career as a couturier was interrupted he quite happily took up sculpting and painting. “If my subject happens to be a woman, maybe I’d make her a dress,” he once noted. “But sometimes a dress isn’t able to communicate all the emotions that I wish to convey. So I try to express my ideas through other mediums.”
Fit and athletic — in his youth he had been a keen rugby player, mountaineer and pelota enthusiast — he continued to be the epitome of stylish youthfulness, wearing his customary uniform of sugar-pink cord trousers, polo shirt, sweater and trainers well into old age.He died January 7 2016.
Sarthak Jain, Namanpal Singh, Sejal Goyal, Vidhi Kedia, Karma Thakrar, prasiddhi kapasi, Prerna Gothi,
