André Courrèges
French fashion designer who revolutionised womenswear in the 1960s with his ‘Space Age’ outfits
ANDRÉ COURRÈGES, who has died aged 92, 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.
Courrèges’s “new look” swept the world in 1964 almost as dramatically as had that of Dior in 1947, but, unlike Dior, whose clothes evoked the opulence of a bygone age, Courrèges’s highly distinctive designs owed virtually nothing to tradition, instead they embraced the “Space Age”.
Often credited with inventing the miniskirt (although Mary Quant and John Bates have also been cited as its creator), Courrèges’s other innovations include the graphic A-line shift, the ribbed bodysuit, the short white go-go boot, the skinny-legged hip-hugger, and the trouser suit. He brought Modernism to clothing design and both fashionistas and women on the high street were dazzled by his futuristic vision. He was immediately touted as the designer for “tomorrow”.
André Courrèges was born on March 9 1923 in Pau in France’s Basque country. As a young man he was fascinated by everything to do with art, design and fashion and wished to become a painter, but his parents insisted on a more practical training and so he began his studies as a civil engineer. Bridges, however, could not sustain his interest for long and he switched midstream to architecture and textile design, finding work designing boots, shoes and men’s suits for a local tailor.
His career was temporarily halted by the war during which he served as a pilot in the French Air Force. He eventually arrived in Paris in 1945. There he worked briefly for a designer named Jeanne Lafaurie, but soon realised he needed to study under one of the great masters of couture. He waited until 1950 for a position to open up with Cristóbal Balenciaga, and remained with the Spanish maestro for 11 years, absorbing all he could about cut, quality and construction. These years taught him to be a serious, committed perfectionist, and he emerged not just a designer but a brilliant tailor.
In 1961 Courrèges opened his own salon at 48 Avenue Kleber, where his assistant was another ex-Balenciaga student, Coqueline Barrière, whom he married six years later. It was she who became responsible for his distinctive fashion shows, where in place of the sedate mannequins of the 1950s catwalk, a dozen bright, buzzing girls popped in and out of the room to the sound of jazz and musique concrète – the perfect complement to his fresh, young look. From his cramped white premises, reverberating with progressive jazz, he sprang into the future, using his “ascetic scissors” to deliver designs that were enchanting yet simple.
In 1963 he first introduced the trouser suit and with it the revolutionary notion that trousers could be worn by women as widely as they were by men. His trousers, however, were not based on men’s, but were stovepipe slim, slit to fit over the foot, and came to the top of the hip bone. Nor were they to be worn with the shirt tucked in. They came with slit-blacked tops that showed a sliver of midriff and a bra-less back.
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.
Courrèges had broken the fashion plate. All his clothes were designed for the modern woman’s modern life. They were meant to allow complete ease of movement – to run, sit down, get in and out of cars with comfort.
It was in 1964 that he reigned over the fashion world with his “Space Age” collection, and the following year after his miniskirt collection of 1965 he was copied worldwide. Women’s Wear
called him the “Le Corbusier of Paris Couture” and his clothes were embraced by Lee Radziwill, Margaret Trudeau, the Baroness de Rothschild and Princess Ira von Fürstenberg.
He was furious at what he considered plagiarism by others, however, and retired from public life for a period, devoting himself to his couture clients. In future, he decided, no one could profit by stealing his designs because he himself would have ready-to-wear lines available all over the world. While preparing to move from premises that were too small, he showed only a smallish collection to his regular clientele.
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.
The fashion house he had set up changed ownership several times and in 1983 Japanese investors moved in with a 65 per cent stake. In 1985 he stopped producing a couture collection altogether. But in the early 1990s, with a 1960s revival in full swing, and renewed backing from a French venture capital company, Courrèges began taking his futuristic fashions forward into the 21st century. His company was eventually sold to Jacques Bungert and Frédéric Torloting, two advertising executives, in 2011. “When the feeling of a brand is respected,” Bungert said, “it can be reborn without losing its integrity.”
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 is survived by his wife and their daughter. André Courrèges, born March 9 1923, died January 7 2016