Remembering Christian Lacroix’s designs...

Less a minimalist, more a greater romantic, similar to Dior, Saint Laurent, and later, Galliano, than the stripped-back designers that came to define the 90s.
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When he launched his couture house in 1987 — the first new couture maison established since Yves Saint Laurent’s — he brought fantasy, color and historical drama back into Paris fashion with full force. His work was exuberant, theatrical and decorative, filled with references to art, costume, Provence and aristocratic dress.

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If Dior gave postwar fashion its dream of grandeur, Lacroix revived that sense of spectacle for the late twentieth century. Like Yves Saint Laurent, he understood fashion as culture and history as material; like Galliano, he approached clothing almost as costume and narrative. But Lacroix was distinctly his own: more baroque, more folkloric, more saturated with joy.
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To this day, Lacroix’s designs shine bright. Through fashion, he staged fantasies and celebrations, by using clothing and accessories as his mode of expression. In a fashion system that often rewards reduction, he remains one of the clearest examples of what happens when fashion embraces excess as poetry.