Poiret and Avant-garde Fashion

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Poiret influence: An evening coat by Paquin, influenced by Poiret. View larger

Paul Poiret was the leading Paris designer from 1908 to World War 1. His contributions to twentieth-century fashion have been likened to Picasso's contributions to twentieth-century art. Possibly influenced by the ideas of the German dress reform movement, he designed loose, straight coats cut !ike kimonos and straight, often high-waisted dresses which hung from the shoulders. He claimed to have made women· throw away their corsets, but Vionnet and other designers have alsa taken credit for the ending of the tight-laced silhouette. (In fact, women continued to wear boned corsets until well after World War II.) His fashion house closed in 1929, and he spent his remaining years impoverished. But Poiret was for a while a revolutionary in revolutionary times and also a canny impresario. His radically streamlined, unstructured, often stridently colored clothes freed women from corsets while evoking exotic, non-Western cultures and a fierce disregard for social convention. Poiret was influenced by the fashion for oriental colors and styles, and also by the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev's dance company, which took Paris by storm with their exotic productions. These included vibrant backcloth and costume designs by Leon Bakst and Jose Maria Sert, and unfamiliar "modem" music and choreography. Poiret himself minimized the significance of Bakst' s influence on his work, but few believed this daim. He achieved his greatest fame with his "hobble skirts" of 1911, which brought public outcry and even Papal denundation. He used striking, even violent color combinations and his reds, violets, orange, rose and turquoise moved radically away from the pastel prettiness of more conventional Belle Epoque tints and equal1y from the half tones and "off" colors of the Liberty style. Poiret functioned as a kind of one-man cultural scene. He collected art, gave lavish costume parties and made astute use of the press while laying the groundwork for fashion design as a modern art and a modern business. His clients included Sarah Bernhardt, Nancy Cunard, Isadora Duncan, Colette and Helena Rubinstein. Man Ray photographed Peggy Guggenheim in a Poiret gown and turban. Edward Steichen’s first fashion photographs were taken of models in Poiret’s atelier. Poiret's designs were beautifully illustrated by Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape. He was a great publicist for his designs, and established a training school for young women in which they could leam the art of dressmaking.

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