The Parisian fashion designer Christian Lacroix has declared his haute couture catwalk for the stage. His clothes are still considered opulent works of art that can immediately recognize that he is not only a designer but also a gifted art historian. The company is run without him since 2009 – Yet. But he created opera costumes still how up to date for a production in Berlin.

If the saying “Behind every successful man is a strong woman” to someone fits perfectly, then born in the 1951 in Arles French fashion designer Christian Lacroix. Although he loved as a boy costumes and already drew first imaginative designs for dresses, but it was finally his wife Francoise Rose Thiel, the zusprach him in the 1970’s courage and it opened the way into the fashion industry.

Because they had good contacts with the Paris haute couture fashion company, the first job was as fast and the fledgling Lacroix got a job in 1978 as a sign assistant in the fashion department at Hermes.

Suddenly designer – the unplanned career of Christian Lacroix

But actually Lacroix wanted to be a museum director and studied for literature and art history. His doctoral thesis, entitled “clothing in paintings of the 17th century,” he wrote, however, never ends. In a way, he always remained faithful as a designer of his research question, especially in his costumes that he designed the way and to this day for theater, ballet and opera pieces.

Christian Lacroix wird der Star der Pariser Haute Couture

But first Christian Lacroix showed that his wife had rightly recognized that talent lies dormant in him. Soon he was working for Guy Paulin and Jean Patou. From 1980 he was taken even for the Japanese House and Hofdesigner the imperial family under contract. With so much success, and above all creativity, it was not long before the fashion brand “Christian Lacroix” was launched in 1987.

From then on, things really took off for the creative designer. His lavish creations, mostly gold embroidery and sparkling, deliberately overloaded and somehow “not of this world” met in a special way the spirit of the times. He preferred to incorporate elements of folklore in his clothes.

Lacroix Lacroix ohne

But Christian Lacroix has always been an artist and never a businessman. It was the designer more concerned with fashion than to lucrative. And so he had to admit in 2009 that the business with the opulent clothes that are barely worn in everyday life, for many years was in the red. Lacroix filed for bankruptcy, the production was stopped. Today the house Lacroix consists only of a licensing business ties, perfume, glasses and home textiles.

The name is indeed remained, but Christian Lacroix personally did not have much to do with the business.

He makes today instead, what he has always done best: designing costumes for opera and theater productions consuming. He is currently responsible for the costumes of “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” at the Staatsoper im Schiller Theater in Berlin, in June, 2014 premiere.