[Editor’s note: With the news that STL has acquired the Christian Lacroix brand, we’re taking a look back at the designer’s fall 1989 couture show. Presented in Paris on July 23, 1989, it has been digitized as part of Vogue Runway’s ongoing efforts to document the history of fashion shows.]
There have been signs of a revival of the colorful, high-maintenance, exuberant ’80s for years – and I’m all for it. But despite doggedly following the breadcrumb trails, the trend never reached critical mass. Now, based on a number of factors – word of a Metropolitan-Themed birthday party at new New York hotspot Chez Margaux, Christian Lacroix archive dresses spotted on the red carpet, the padded football shoulders seen at the Fashion A Christmas party, and a second Trump presidency, could bring change.
The opening in 1987 of Lacroix’s maison de couture – the first since that of Yves Saint Laurent – steered the trajectory from brash opulence in the direction of (historical) fantasy. After all, the Arlesian designer had come to Paris hoping to become a curator. “I remember loving mixing velvet with everything,” he said in a recent email. Lacroix is rightly associated with sartorial musings, but that wasn’t all he could do. His sense of play reigns supreme in this collection. If you look closely, you will see that he gives everyday clothing a layer of fairy dust. Biker shorts were made of lace, jeans were treated to a floral appliqué and satin and velvet overalls emerged from beneath a giant gray fur coat.
FashionAndré Leon Talley wondered at the time whether the various women who had ordered Look 47, with a sheath with a drawstring through which a full gala skirt was visible, would appear at the same party. The designer’s “witty orange satin dinner dress, cut like a denim skirt” (Look 37), Talley noted, was “inspired by Anne Bass’ request last January for a short evening skirt.” Lacroix said an embroidered Bohemian maxi skirt, meanwhile, was inspired by a maxi skirt he found in Madrid while working on a Carmen production in the Nîmes arena a few months earlier, “with old cotton flowers and sequins on wool.”
A trio of final dresses consisted of ethereal tulle apron skirts that opened at the center front to reveal a slip dress. With its velvet corset, bejeweled leggings and graduated ruffles, the penultimate issue reimagines a can-can dress in a grandly postmodern way.