André Courrèges

André Courrèges, born March 9, 1923 in Pau (Basses-Pyrénées), and died January 7, 2016 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, is a French couturier, founder of the Courrèges house. Promoter of miniskirts and pants for women, from the beginning of the 1960s he created functional, structured fashion, a symbol of his time, and which would later inspire many stylists with its geometric shapes and the omnipresence of white. Biography At fifteen, André Courrèges wanted to go to art school. "You will be an engineer" said his father, a butler, who sent him to study civil engineering. André Courrèges studied in Pau and discovered drawing and architecture. He moved to Paris just after the Second World War4 and took courses at the Ecole de la chambre syndicale de la couture in Paris. From 1950, he worked briefly at Jeanne Lafaurie, then for ten years at Balenciaga, learning the trade and its techniques. The first five years, André Courrèges learns a new thing every day, he says, the following five years, he is bored. He worked there with his future wife, twelve years his junior, Coqueline Barrière. They both left the haute couture house, and André Courrèges was replaced at Balenciaga by Emmanuel Ungaro. Coqueline Courrèges will specify later: “André and I needed to move away from the influence of our mentor, Balenciaga. The objective was to keep its philosophy and its reasoning but to adapt it into something that could be accessible to the new and young generation6. “When he leaves Balenciaga, he gives himself five years to succeed, he will do it in two. Courrèges (company). He founded his company in 1961, and very quickly found success. The clothes are built, built and testify to his passion for architecture. He wants to dress youth and liberate women: for that, he removes all the obstacles that previously made up women's toilets, corset, bras, high heels ... instead he creates playsuits, suits with large pockets, pants and capris, flat boots, etc. André Courrèges and his former assistant Coqueline got married and moved to rue François Ier8 in March 1967; the same year he created his ready-to-wear department under the name of “Couture Fourrure”. Women's magazines then say of André Courrèges that he "took ten years from women". But in the mid-1990s, André Courrèges, ill, retired; his wife takes over the artistic direction of the company. In 2002, after the last haute couture show, André Courrèges decided to devote himself to other projects, such as painting, sculpture or non-polluting vehicles with his subsidiary Courrèges Énergie. His wife sells the house to Jacques Bungert and Frédéric Tortloting in 2011. André Courrèges's work is that of a visionary: he sets up a radical, personal and polymorphous universe and adapts his clothes to changing mores, looking towards the future, while remaining in tune with the times. Architect of clothing as much as couturier, he will be nicknamed "Le Corbusier of haute couture", refusing the pure aestheticism of styling in favor of easy-to-wear creations. Throughout his career, he will say that he primarily addresses modern, active women who want to buy "a way of life" rather than clothes. He will influence several stylists thereafter, and we will find the refined spirit of Courrèges in the collections of Thierry Mugler, Jil Sander, Chalayan, Stephen Sprouse (en), or Nicolas Ghesquière. Courrèges's “little white dress” will become iconic, such as Coco Chanel's little black dress. Speaking of Courrèges's first creations, Yves Saint Laurent will say that “his collection appeared like a bomb, afterwards nothing was as before. »Suffering from Parkinson's disease since the end of the 1980s, he died on January 7, 2016.