Fashion icons: Christian Lacroix, the French designer who was inspired by Spanish folklore to succeed

The great fashion icon of the eighties and nineties, Christian Lacroix, was born on May 16, 1951 in the French city of Arles. He studied Art History at the University of Montpellier, and when he finished his training, he moved to Paris with the aim of working in a museum as an art conservator. To his surprise, the City of Light -which was not particularly to the designer’s liking-, gave him much more than he imagined, since it was there that he met the Parisian Françoise Roesensthiel, who is still the wife of him today.

It was Roesensthiel who encouraged him to dedicate himself to the world of fashion, and he began working first at Hermès and then as a designer at Jean Patou, where he began to define his peculiar style, marked by baroque and folkloric silhouettes. Later, it was his wife who also introduced him to Jean-Jacques Picart, the press officer of Mugler, of Ungaro and of a young Bernard Arnault, at that time in charge of Financière Agache, origin of the LVMH Group. And together with Arnault, Lacroix would create his own haute couture firm, which became the first brand created by the LMVH group from scratch.

In 1985 he launched his first haute couture collection inspired by Spain. Specifically, in the country’s folklore, gypsy culture and bullfighting, experiences he had nurtured from since he was very young. His collection stood out for its bright colors, careful finishes, voluminous suits and impossible shapes, with satin, velvet, embroidery or lace as the main materials.

Success came to him shortly after launching his first collection, as the media in his country soon compared him to designers such as Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. So much so, that the New York Times titled the chronicle of his first fashion shows as: “For Lacroix, a triumph; for sewing, a future.” The French designer’s firm remained on the crest of the wave for a long period, since the opulence and ornamentation that predominated in the fashion of the eighties could be found in an outstanding way in his collections. In addition, her suits were known for their extremely high price, which was only accessible to millionaire women of the time and which, together with the impossibility of her designs for working women, aroused criticism from feminists such as Gloria Steinem, editor of the magazine Ms and one of the protagonists of the series Mrs America (2020), who described her designs as “a reaction to the progress of women”.

Thanks to his good figures, Lacroix diversified his business and launched new lines of perfumes, jewelry, accessories and men’s fashion, and opened stores in different cities around the world. However, the nineties were a great blow for the French firm, when minimalism and simplicity banished opulence and impossible designs.

This new era made the LVMH group sell the Lacroix firm to the Falic group, a fact that greatly affected the designer professionally and personally. In 2009, after several attempts to relaunch the firm, Lacroix closed his firm due to lack of liquidity.