Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian fashion designer from an aristocratic background. She created the house of Schiaparelli in Paris in 1927, which she managed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs celebrated Surrealism and eccentric fashions. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l'œil, and for the use of bright colors like her "shocking pink".
Christian Dior SE, commonly known as Dior, is a French multinational luxury goods company that is controlled and chaired by French businessman Bernard Arnault, who also heads LVMH. Dior holds 42.36% of the shares and 59.01% of the voting rights within LVMH.
Trinity Christian Academy (TCA) is a private, conservative non-denominational Christian school in Addison, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. TCA was established in 1970 and, as of 2020, enrolls about 1300 students.
Julien Fournié is a French fashion designer and CEO of his own eponymous haute couture company founded in the summer of 2009. Previously, he was the last creative director of the Paris-based haute couture fashion house Torrente. In 2008, he was named creative director for womenswear, menswear and accessories at Ramosport.
Viktor & Rolf is a Dutch avant-garde luxury fashion house founded in 1993 by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. For more than twenty years, Viktor & Rolf have sought to challenge preconceptions of fashion and bridge the divide between fashion and art. Viktor & Rolf have designed both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. The duo is renowned for their avant-garde designs, which rely heavily on theatrical and performative fashion runways.
A fashion show is an event put on by a fashion designer to showcase their upcoming line of clothing and/or accessories during a fashion week. Fashion shows debut every season, particularly the spring/summer and fall/winter seasons. This is where designers seek to promote their new fashions. The four major fashion weeks in the world, collectively known as the "Big 4", in chronological order of their eponymous fashion weeks, are those held in New York City, London, Milan, and Paris. Berlin fashion week is also of global importance.
Jacques Fath was a French fashion designer who was considered one of the three dominant influences on postwar haute couture, the others being Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain. The playwright Georges Fath was his great-grandfather.
Riccardo Tisci is an Italian fashion designer. He studied in Italy at the Design Istituto d’Arte Applicata in Cantù until the age of 17, and then graduated from London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1999. In 2005, Tisci was creative director for Givenchy Women's haute couture and ready-to-wear lines. In May 2008 he was additionally menswear and accessories designer of the Givenchy men's division. In March 2018, he was appointed chief creative officer of Burberry, succeeding Christopher Bailey.
Rochas is a fashion, beauty, and perfume house founded in 1925 by French designer Marcel Rochas, the first designer of 2/3-length coats and skirts with pockets and one of the two designers, along with Elsa Schiaparelli, who launched the fashion for padded shoulders in 1931. Rochas had been known primarily for its signature perfume, "Femme," which was packaged in a pink box with black lace.
Lanvin is a French luxury fashion house founded in 1889 by Jeanne Lanvin in Paris. It is the oldest French fashion house still in operation. Since 2018, it has been a subsidiary of Shanghai-based Lanvin Group.
Austin Scarlett is an American fashion designer and artist known for his appearances on the first season of Project Runway, 2012's Project Runway: All Stars, and his own series, On the Road with Austin and Santino.
Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term haute couture generally refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from the skirt and sleeves. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became the centre of a growing industry that focused on making outfits from high-quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable of sewers—often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and can often refer to the same thing in spirit.
Count Renato Zavagli Ricciardelli delle Caminate, professionally known as René Gruau was a fashion illustrator whose exaggerated portrayal of fashion design through painting has had a lasting effect on the fashion industry. Because of Gruau's inherent skills and creativity, he contributed to a change in the entire fashion industry through the new pictures that represented the already popular designs created by designers in the industry. The benefits, including economic stimulation and enhancement of advertising are still present in the industry today via a new way of fashion illustration, fashion photography. Gruau became one of the best known and favorite artists of the haute couture world during the 1940s and 50s working with Femina, Marie Claire, L'Officiel, L'Album Du Figaro and an assortment of "high-style" magazines. Gruau's artwork is recognized and commended internationally in some of Paris and Italy's most prestigious art museums including the Louvre in Paris and the Blank in Italy. In addition to his international fame and recognition, "Gruau's artwork is known for its timeless and enduring style".
Josephus Melchior Thimister was a Dutch interior decorator and noted fashion designer who launched his eponymous fashion label, THIMISTER in 1997. In 2001, the editor-in-chief of Vogue USA Anna Wintour named Josephus Thimister as one of the Twenty-First Century's best fashion designers. In 2010, Cathy Horyn writing for The New York Times described his couture show and its pieces as, "fascinating (…) quite clear in military shapes and broken elegance. Dresses like melted down family silver". After a brief period with Karl Lagerfeld as an assistant, he worked as a designer at Jean Patou before being appointed director of luxury prêt-à-porter at the house of Balenciaga. It was for the next five and a half years that Thimister would spend reviving the brand with his pure, succinctly modernist vision. He then set up his own Paris-based house in 1997, and thereafter presented both haute couture and prêt-à-porter collections under his name.
François Lesage was a French couture embroiderer. Lesage was globally known in the art of embroidery and worked for the largest fashion and haute couture houses. His atelier is now part of Chanel through the company's subsidiary, Paraffection.
Maison Margiela, formerly Maison Martin Margiela, is a French luxury fashion house founded by Belgian designer Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens in 1988 and headquartered in Paris. The house produces both haute couture-inspired artisanal collections and ready-to-wear collections, with the former influencing the designs of the latter. Product lines include womenswear, menswear, jewellery, footwear, accessories, leather goods, perfumes and household goods. Known for deconstructive and avant-garde designs with unconventional materials, Maison Margiela has traditionally held live shows in unusual settings, for example empty metro stations and street corners. Models' faces are often obscured by fabric or long hair to direct attention to the clothes and design. Margiela resigned as creative designer in 2009 and John Galliano was appointed to the role in 2014.
Maria Grazia Chiuri is an Italian fashion designer. After stints working at Fendi and Valentino, Chiuri was named creative director at Dior in 2016.
Brandon Maxwell is an American fashion designer, television personality, director, and photographer. He is the founder and creative director of Brandon Maxwell, the luxury women’s ready-to-wear label.
The lobster dress is a 1937 dress designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. It features a large lobster painted by Salvador Dalí.
Maison Schiaparelli is a haute couture house created by avant-garde Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, and moving towards luxury ready-to-wear after being bought in 2007 by Diego Della Valle. The house is famous for its eccentric fashions, the use of Surrealism in its collections, its sense of humour, the "shocking Pink" color, gender crossing, and its use of human anatomy depictions, among other unconventional themes.
