Mood Somber at Christian Lacroix’s Winter 2010 Paris Show
From The Associated Press:
It’s not every day a fashion show triggers rivers of tears and group hugs. But that was the just what happened Tuesday as Christian Lacroix showed what could possibly be his last haute couture show — at least for as long as it takes the legendary French designer to sort out his finances.
Lacroix, whose name has come over the past two decades to epitomize the rarefied world of haute couture, launched insolvency proceedings in late May and looks likely to close its doors at the end of this month. Money at the Paris-based luxury label was so tight that nearly everyone involved in Tuesday’s show agreed to work for free to make it happen.
In somber shades of black and navy, Lacroix’s winter 2010 collection had a funereal feeling, and the crowd of well-heeled women wiping their eyes after the display only added to the dark mood.
Longtime fashion critic Isabelle Chalencon was among those who broke down during the show.
“I must admit I was really touched because for me, he is simply the greatest,” said Chalencon, a fashion journalist with France-2 television. “It’s simply not possible that a label like this one can disappear.”
Still, it wasn’t all gloom and doom. Nearly all of the 24 looks garnered a raucous round of applause from the normally fickle fashion crowd. Loyal fans unfurled a banner reading “Christian Lacroix forever” as the genial designer took a final lap around the catwalk.
Lacroix was optimistic that the death of the house — and Tuesday’s symbolic burial — would mark a new beginning and that the label would rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes.
“I can’t think this is the end,” Lacroix told Associated Press Television News in a backstage interview. “It’s the beginning of something, I hope.”
For all the excesses of the fashion industry that are being curtailed, necessarily if reluctantly, by the current economy, the idea that couture might eventually die out altogether is extremely sobering.
Photo credit: The Associated Press
