Genius is no guarantee in fashion. You can change the world, but that world eventually, inevitably demands payback. The fashion industry is, after all, a commercial enterprise. The gourmet spread he laid on backstage was only the start. Lift-off took place with the visual and aural froth of the set and the soundtrack. Then we soared into the stratosphere on clouds of colour, wings of sumptuous fabric, flying carpets of rococo pattern.
Pure fantasy. He teased. Christian Lacroix : As a child, I was a bit fragile and very often ill, and I was always fascinated by the past. I was in love with Mickey.
My dream every morning when I woke up was to see if Mickey was in my bed. I wanted him to be alive; I loved him so much. I imagined Mickey and I attending a film opening and there were real people mixed with the cartoons. I was excited by seeing the date on the cover of that magazine β , five years before I was born. I understood then that life, the world and Mickey had all existed before me, and in that moment, the past became my thing. It had a real attic, with clothes and books.
I found bound volumes from the Second Empire, fashion books from , a century earlier. I was always boring my grandparents. Tell me about the family; tell me about the war; tell me when you lost your mansions. They were quite nouveau riche, but they were elegant; they had taste. It was a wonderful house. When it was snowing, they had to leave with the children at five in the morning to get to school for eight. My great-aunt Madeleine was the first to go south to Arles.
She was brilliant and wonderful, and my first muse. I could cry when I speak of her. During the war, she was in the Resistance. They had all these Jewish workers with fake names in their factory, and she was arrested by the Gestapo. But it was made up of young guys from Arles and she recognized them. I know that she also helped a doctor and a very famous surgeon escape from the Germans in Arles by dressing them as women in her clothes. But she would never tell me anything herself.
