He passed away in 2016, after a decades-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The French designer was left behind, and he would eventually retire from his brand in the ’90s. Courrèges’ moon girls were soon replaced by the hippies, and fashion came back down to earth. Yet for all his innovation, fashion moved faster.
And he took inspiration from sportswear, creating clothes in stretch fabrics and knits that you find everywhere today. He made designs out of clear plastic derived from vegetable fibres. They would dominate the streets.Ĭourrèges also began experimenting with fabrics instead of the flowing silks and heavy brocades of couture’s past, he favoured metallics and synthetic fibres, such as the glossy polyvinyl chloride (PVC). His forward-thinking spirit led him to launch his ready-to-wear line, making his clothes accessible to young women. (Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images)Ĭourrèges would continue to explore space through the lens of fashion for the rest of the decade. A forgotten legacy André Courrèges and his models, wearing his Spring/Summer 1976 haute couture collection. And he would find clients in the decade’s icons: Jacqueline Kennedy, Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot and Françoise Hardy, to name a few. He was celebrated along with fellow French designers Cardin and Paco Rabanne as fashion’s “three musketeers” for their futuristic, daring clothes inspired by space travel. It was that show that cemented Courrèges’ place in fashion in the ’60s. They were not the bird-like dames that mirrored traditional haute couture’s clients instead, Courrèges’ “moon girls” were young and athletic, skipping and dancing to the music at his revolutionary fashion show. The models, too, looked out of this world.
And they were accompanied by accessories for fashionable astronauts, such as white gloves, helmets, goggles, and flat, block-heeled boots - the world’s first “go-go” boots. His radical designs held their distinctive shapes thanks to the use of stiff, gabardine fabric, especially in the colour of white (“the colour of the moon”).
(Photo credit: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)Ĭompared to the bubble skirts and ballooning gowns of Christian Dior and Balenciaga, Courrèges’ clothes resembled triangles, trapeziums and rectangles. The collection even included trousers, which were illegal for women to wear in ’60s France. So did the miniskirts, which Courrèges, along with British designer Mary Quant, is credited for inventing. Double-breasted coats, which were buckled with belts and flared from the waist down, allowed for easy movement. It was unlike anything seen in haute couture before: instead of dresses that constricted or clung to the body, Courrèges introduced A-line minidresses that freed women of the need for girdles and bras. When Courrèges unveiled his Space Age collection in 1964, his career took off.
PIERRE CARDIN 60S SPACE AGE FULL
In the wake of two world wars, the future suddenly seemed full of possibilities, and it was reflected in the ambitious designs offered by everyone from artists to architects, from filmmakers to fashion designers. The Soviet Union and America had launched their great Space Race to get a man on the moon. Maison de Courrèges opened just as the space craze took hold on the Western World. They marked their haute couture salon with a logo featuring the initials “AC” - “André and Coqueline”. In 1961, with Balenciaga’s blessing and financial backing, Courrèges and Barrière opened the Maison de Courrèges in Paris.
It was also there that he met his creative collaborator and future wife, Coqueline Barrière. Like Hubert de Givenchy, Courrèges learned the art of tailoring at the couturier’s hallowed atelier, where he worked for 10 years. He was taken in by the master of haute couture, Cristóbal Balenciaga, whose strong, sculptural shapes spoke to Courrèges’ sensibilities. In 1951, he arrived in Paris to become a designer. He studied civil engineering (just like fellow fashion designer Virgil Abloh), before serving as a fighter pilot for the French Air Force in World War II. Despite growing up in the sort of countryside that most people dream of retiring to, Courrèges had a thing for architecture. (Photo credit: AFP / Pierre Guillard)Īndré Courrèges was born in 1923 in Pau, a city in southwestern France that is filled with lush valleys, spectacular mountains and historic castles. From buildings to Balenciaga André Courrèges outside his boutique in Paris in 1986. Below, we dive into his contributions to fashion (many of which are in your wardrobe now), how he shaped ’60s fashion, and how his influences live on today.
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