In love with Lacroix

If you had to choose only one blouse to wear the rest of your life, which would it be?

I have a quick answer to that one: a Christian Lacroix blouse I got on sale at the designer’s then affordable Bazar ready-to-wear outlet at the Landmark in Hong Kong in 1995. I still wear it a lot these days. I love it because it looks like Lacroix’s sketchpad filled with fashion sketches, doodles, and his signature hearts.

The last of my lucky purchases (on sale, of course, before the Landmark outlet closed down, alas) were two Lacroix blazers which I still lovingly wear.

Yes, I love Lacroix. Even if these days, buying a Lacroix at Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong seems too formidable a thought, that I would rather look at the Lacroix racks at Rustan’s and wait for their big sale.

Yes, my heart jumped a thousand times when I learned that Lacroix’s creations would be presented at the Ayala Museum by Alliance Francaise de Manille, in collaboration with the French Embassy for their French Spring in Manila 2006.

For me, Christian Lacroix embodies the consummate couturier whose visions transcend the fashion runway. His creations show how a designer can be such a nationalist, capturing the art, history and culture of France, yet appealing to a sophisticated global market. His designs capture a bit of his country, his people, and the things and images that filled his childhood – Gallo-Roman ruins and remnants of World War II, Provencal and gypsy traditions, museums, paintings, books, religious imageries, opera, theater, museum paintings.

In fact, after studying Art History at the University of Montpellier, then Sorbonne and Ecole du Louvre, all Lacroix wanted was to be a museum curator. Until his wife Francoise encouraged him to draw, and he worked at Hermes (1978), then at the Jean Patou house (1981).

Lacroix got the Golden Thimble Award and was named Most Influential Foreign Designer by CFDA New York, and was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’ Honneur (2005). If only our government were as supportive of our fashion designers and the garment industry!

Lacroix is a truly fearless designer. At the height of the minimalist trend in the 1980s, he produced unapologetically glamorous, ornate and dramatic clothes, for which the minimalists declared that his clothes belonged to the stage.

Bernard Arnault of the powerful LVMH group didn’t think so. He established the House of Christian Lacroix at Rue du Fabourg Saint Honore in Paris. The Falic group who later bought Lacroix from LVMH (2005) didn’t think so.

The House of Emilio Pucci didn’t think so either, appointing Lacroix as its artistic director (2002 to 2005). Lacroix it was who reinvented Pucci for modern times.

Lacroix is the quintessential couturier whose designs cover a whole lifestyle range – clothes, bags, shoes, glasses, scarves, ties, tableware, scents, lingerie, menswear, perfumes, wedding gowns. He has reaped awards for his designs for opera, theater and ballet. He has launched books and CDs. He has even designed trains. Can you imagine what Lacroix would do with our Pinoy jeepney!

The Lacroix exhibit at Ayala Museum (ongoing until May 4) was curated by Yves Sabourin, who declares: "The idea is to present a creation of the French spirit."

Yes, it is very French. But this traveling exhibit finds a link with every country it has been to. Including the Philippines.

So very Lacroix to be fascinated by Asian countries, the same way he was once enamored of the Beatles’ England, Barcelona and Venice.

Bonding with people of other cultures, in fact, is the essence of French Spring in Manila 2006, now in its eighth year, with the slogan "Sama-sama."As French Ambassador Gérard Chesnel declared: "French Spring is not merely a showcase of contemporary French art, but rather a collaboration of artists of different nationalities or origins. Promotion of French cultural diversity is a key element of French cultural diplomacy. Thus this cultural season in Manila provides the perfect venue for artists of different cultures to create together." This year, for instance, French Embassy press attache Carolle Lucas proudly says that the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket will be staged in Filipino by a French director with a Filipino cast.

For past French Springs, French jazz trumpeteer Alain Brunet came twice (1999, 2001) to perform with Ugoy Ugoy, then Buhay. An exhibit of French contemporary paintings curated by Philippe Piquet at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila was opened amid jazz entertainment by Alain Brunet on the trumpet with Martin Macalintal on the piano. (The talented Martin, by the way, is now audio-visual attache of the French Embassy.) And who can forget how Marcel Marceau enthralled young and old Filipinos, how the Cirque Baroque brought cheer to Ayala Malls shoppers, and how Transe Expresse at Enchanted Kingdom brought theater closer to the masses?

Alliance Francaise director Olivier Dintinger vows that this year’s French Spring is all abloom with dance, film, jazz, theater, art and food events designed to reach out, sama-sama style.

For the Lacroix exhibit, curator Sabourin will hold discussions related to fashion at the Ayala Museum this April. Would it have been quite interesting if our very own geniuses like Ernest Santiago, Inno Sotto, Vic Barba and Yvonne Quisumbing-Romulo were asked to create their own homage to Lacroix by way of a couture piece each?

Even if it were just something like a cotton blouse full of fashion sketches, doodles and the designer’s own trademarks.