French Fashion Images: Les Robes de Paul Poiret

The early twentieth century kimono dresses of French fashion designer Paul Poiret changed the fashion world forever. Let’s look at Les robes de Paul Poiret

Paul Poiret

Paul Poiret (1879-1944) was a French fashion designer and couturier. He completely revolutionized fashion at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the time, fashion involved a great deal of frills, corsets and structure. Poiret’s designs broke from this tradition completely, with kimono style, loose fitting designs.

At first, he faced considerable resistance. Russian Princess Bariatinsky recoiled in horror at the modernity of his designs. “What a horror! When there are low fellows who run after our sledges and annoy us, we have their heads cut off, and we put them in sacks just like that.”

Despite this, Poiret’s designs quickly became popular. His designs offered freedom, comfort and rebellious modernity. Poiret started his fashion house in 1903, and cultivated his brand as the antithesis of the conventional. He threw wild harem themed parties for the Parisian elite, designed elaborate window displays and hired an avant-garde illustrator by the name of Paul Iribe (1883-1935) to illustrate his designs.

Paul Iribe

Paul Iribe was a French designer and decorative arts illustrator. He created these illustrations of wealthy women with banal affluent lifestyles to represent the newest designs in Poiret’s collections. Eventually they were compiled into the book Les robes de Paul Poiret (1908). To create these works, Iribe used a technique popular in France at the time called pochoir, which is essentially using stencils to apply colors. This rather labor-intensive technique created flat, but vibrant work, with intense colors.

Iribe had a successful and prolific design career, creating images for Vogue and designing rugs, furniture and fabrics. He was also part of Parisian bohemian society, and socialized with a mix of the artistic and the wealthy. In later life he worked on set design for Hollywood films, and was one of Coco Chanel’s many lovers.

French Fashion Images: Les Robes de Paul Poiret