"Parisian Life": Christian Lacroix in director's clothes<

Like a remnant of his former life, Christian Lacroix wears an impeccable white blouse to work. Since he left the catwalks and haute couture salons, the designer slipped from theaters to opera houses. Its end of the year is a fireworks show between the dressing room of Romeo and Juliet at the Opéra-Comique and a first staging, La Vie parisienne, promised for a long tour. Christian Lacroix has no trouble calling himself a costume designer, in a way he always has been. “As a child, I played at being someone else, I was already designing costumes, most often for women. I also dressed up. »

A troupe of children, Les Sparrows, from Marseille, made him dream. “They recreated historical paintings. I never stopped feeling nostalgic,” says Mr. Lacroix. “I was bored, I didn't want to be in the real world. Of course, there was the cinema. All week I was waiting for the weekend sessions. My life then began again. »

The art history student goes to Paris to study at the Ecole du Louvre, imagining himself, for a time, as a museum curator. But fashion caught up with him: first artistic director of Jean Patou, house adrift, then in his own name. A twenty-year adventure. From the end of the 1980s, Lacroix returned to performing with Les Anges ternis by the American choreographer Karole Armitage at the Paris Opera. The back and forth between fashion and the stage is increasing. “A suit is more alive than a haute couture dress. When you work for ballet, you have to consider comfort, cleaning, it's a costume that shows but will also disappear very quickly. »

He appreciates the costumes of flamenco dancers, bullfighters… “It moves, it lives. I don't really like fashion exhibitions, it freezes the movement. Proposals from theaters poured in, from Vienna to Paris, from Berlin to New York. We praise his taste for the old, his erudition too. “To create a costume is to reinvent history. Wanting to recreate the time in detail is illusory. I didn't invent anything during my time as a designer… not a cut, not a silhouette. I drew inspiration from the past. »

From costume to staging

Whoever has designed uniforms for Air France or illustrated the Petit Larousse sees in the show an ideal world. Two major productions, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Paris Opera (2017), and The Free Trade Hotel at the Comédie-Française (2019), unveil another Lacroix, decorator. “Fashion historian Olivier Saillard told me: 'You need a new challenge'. I remembered the moment when I won the competition to 'dress up' the TGV. I was out of my comfort zone. This project of 'La Vie parisienne' had the same effect on me. That is a production carried by several opera houses, significant means and a return to the origins with the complete version of 1866 of Jacques Offenbach's masterpiece.

“The managers of Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice, like the director of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Michel Franck, told me that they only saw me as a director. You see, this is not a request on my part! Until now I felt in my place, I was content to be a cuckoo clock in the imagination of others, doing my research on costumes, on eras. And then came this staging project. Offenbach, that speaks to me. My mother used to sing her tunes, I remember the films inspired by that era. »

After two years of preparation, this Parisian Life has become a reality. “It's something that belongs to me. But I did not work alone. I am surrounded by wonderful artists, like Laurent Delvert, Romain Gilbert (collaborators in the staging), or the choreographer Glyslein Lefever. Without forgetting the chef Romain Dumas. This staging plays on several tables with a rare intelligence, Christian Lacroix daring a dizzying reading, anything but dated. Until the costumes - which he signs of course.

Don't forget 'Come and Try Irish ' session with @gaeilge_glasgow tonight in Govanhill Neighborhood Centre,5 Dais… https://t.co/WCnR54WVJi

— Glasgow St Patrick's Fri Mar 15 18:02:46 +0000 2019

“I had in mind the idea of ​​a music hall, because when it was created, 'La Vie parisienne' was performed by actors who knew how to sing. Moreover, progressively, Offenbach removed certain too difficult passages. We reintroduce them in this version as close as possible to the original. There is also a circus side, with on-sight changes, dancers and acrobats. Without forgetting this je-ne-sais-quoi of melancholy, specific to the composer. I was inspired by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as painters from the North to give a 'color' to the work. In the end, the three hours go by at full speed, from the opening in a station hall to the end under the blare of the party.

The fantasized Paris of Offenbach

Did this Paris of courtesans and wealthy gentlemen exist? No doubt, even if he represented a tiny fringe of the population. “But it is just as much an invention of Offenbach and his librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. In the booklet, one of the protagonists says this incredible thing: 'One day, Paris will be nothing more than a setting for foreigners!' »

Christian Lacroix did not want to juggle between the past and our times “with electric scooters and dead pigeons. Other directors, Laurent Pelly in the lead, do this and very well. But that's not my style. I preferred to immerse myself in the albums of the time, to discover the luxurious lounges of the stations, the photos of the shops of the Louvre. The Palazzetto Bru Zane even has images taken at the premiere with the performers of the premieres. »

While at the Opéra de Liège, one of the co-producers, Lacroix “will go through the trash”. “I found some great costumes there. You see, I continue to collect, to make trend books! The couturier who became a costume designer admits having amassed family albums and postcards very early on. “If there had been Google and Instagram at that time, I would have been crazy! Or I would have fallen ill…”.

In the meantime, he puts on his blouse, between two stays in Arles. “Christian Lacroix is ​​a great costume designer and his greatness comes precisely from his daily and obstinate capacity to forget him. It is the hallmark of the greats to have no presuppositions, nor pride at the time of the first sketches and preliminary discussions on an opera or theater production. For a man who, during his lifetime, is listed in all the dictionaries of the history of fashion, it is the mark of a strange politeness and a rare elegance”, declares Eric Ruf, general administrator of the Comédie. -French. The two men know each other well. Together they worked on a memorable Peer Gynt by Ibsen at the Grand Palais. And find themselves these days at the Opéra-comique for Romeo and Juliet by Charles Gounod after Shakespeare.

Timeless art

“My everyday driving force is astonishment. To see something larger than life. I'm not very social, even going on stage to greet the public is doing me violence. I was very embarrassed to be in the light at the time of my fashion house. Jean-Jacques Picart (his partner), he liked it, I preferred the shade. »

Christian Lacroix nevertheless did catch the light, between a commission for the wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and an appearance in the English series “Absolutely Fabulous”. Above all, his unique pieces have marked the spirits. “There were few Medea or Ariane among the haute couture clients. Yet I saw them as heroines. Except that they didn't know it… With the wedding dresses, the clients told themselves a tale, a story. For the last one I created, the future bride asked to be like in a Persian illumination. It's very theatrical, isn't it? he recalls.

When Christian Lacroix is ​​asked if his art is timeless, he opines: “We don't look at the past anymore because it's history; the future is a utopia. Only the present counts. I have always tried to make the connection between the three. Maybe that's what being timeless is all about. As a child, he loved reading Alice in Wonderland. “Alice, it's a bit like me. I went to the other side. But we will have to come back. If heaven existed, I would like it to look like a time machine. History of seeing Arles at the time of the Romans or the Paris of 1930.” In the meantime, Christian Lacroix celebrates life in his own way, with panache.