«A love letter to Haute Couture and some of its protagonists». This is how illustrator Jordi Labanda describes the book he created together with Estel Vilaseca, fashion manager of the School of Design and Visual Arts (LCI Barcelona). ‘Escenas de Haute Couture’ (Lupita Books) is a beautiful and irresistible ‘pop-up’ work in honor of sophistication and tradition with nine fold-out images with beautiful 3D scenes created by Labanda in a kind of ‘three-dimensional theater that appeals to the youth of the reader. Magical screenplays accompanied by texts by Vilaseca.
Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Paco Rabanne, Jean Paul Gaultier and Alexander McQueen have been chosen by the authors. “Those out there are the sacred cows of fashion for the general public,” Labanda said in an interview with this newspaper. Like Vilaseca, he regrets having to leave out many interesting masters, such as the visionary and surrealist Elsa Schiaparelli, Madame Grès, Madeleine Vionnet or the sculptor Iris van Herpen, who “is laying a new foundation in the sector”, adds Vilaseca. . Once they completed the difficult task of keeping just nine, they had to choose an emblematic piece from each designer, “which would very well define the author’s essence for the illustration”, and the magical setting in which it was to become. where a story can be inferred without the need for words “to round out the fantasy,” adds the illustrator.
Yes, from the start of the project it was clear who should not be missing: Balenciaga. “He is my all-time favorite designer. I thought about what setting would suit a sculptural piece from 1967 and at first I thought of setting the scene in a hall of Garnier’s opera, but the purity of the dress led me to a cleaner and more architectural setting to create a dialogue that would enter into a dialogue with the work of the master,” says Labanda. Vilaseca also feels a huge fascination with the work of the popular Gipuzkoan. As Gipuzkoan, he is also admired by Paco Rabanne, «one of the great unknowns. There is little information about him, although he is still alive,” said the also adviser, who “emphasizes the radical nature of his proposal. He brought a change of mentality, he was a visionary. Not surprisingly, “in the 1960s and 1970s, he was about to patent a dress that could be quickly made with a plastic injection,” he says. Come on, what is currently being achieved with the use of 3D printing in haute couture. And it is that Rabanne “understood that the great revolution would come through fabrics.”
Also indispensable was the “conflicting” Yves Saint Laurent, “a pivotal figure between the worlds of haute couture and prêt-à-porter”, to which the sector has drawn. The Frenchman, who represented Labanda at a party in a luxury penthouse in Paris, ‘had depression, drug problems… He’s a complex character, just like McQueen. Both demanding and sensitive”, who as a company had a hard time navigating the fashion side. “Coco Chanel handled it much better,” Vilaseca points out to the fashion icon, whose official speech does not coincide with the real one. That is why the Catalan’s work has been so hard, because she had to refine the texts without losing nuances, with tasty brushstrokes of additional information that can surprise novices in the field and even, she emphasizes, “fashion connoisseurs” who are both de The heritage of haute couture, a sector romantically described in the prologue as “the last refuge for creativity beyond the trends and speed imposed by fast fashion brands.”
Source: La Verdad
Lloyd Grunewald is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. He is a talented writer who focuses on bringing the latest entertainment-related news to his readers. With a deep understanding of the entertainment industry and a passion for writing, Lloyd delivers engaging articles that keep his readers informed and entertained.
