1. Yves Saint Laurent, spring 1971
dress his friend the jewelry designer Paloma Picasso picked up at a flea market. Although he titled the show “Libération,” it would later become known as his Scandal collection: The parade of knee-length dresses worn with short fur jackets and wedge shoes conjured unwelcome memories of wartime Paris for some, whereas the splashy turbans, lipstick-stained mouths and garish colors marked a sharp departure from traditional ideas of good taste. Watching from the American and British press section, Saint Laurent’s muse, Loulou de la Falaise, listened in on the enraged reactions, recalling, “The things we heard — ‘This collection is for sitting on the bidet.’” And yet only a few months after its debut, the tide of fashion started shifting — with Saint Laurent anticipating the mania for retro-inspired style that would dominate the next few decades. By challenging propriety and blurring the lines between haute couture and prêt-à-porter, the designer broke with the past and embraced the energy and excitement of the streets. “Fashion is the reflection of our time,” he said, “and if it does not express the atmosphere of its time, it means nothing.” — Kin Woo
Charles James, 1953
The British-born couturier Charles James started as a milliner in Chicago and went on to be lauded by Christian Dior as “the greatest talent of my generation,” with a clientele that included both society mavens and fellow designers such as Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. While his 30-plus-year career saw numerous examples of inventive cutting techniques, such as his early 1930s Taxi dress — the first known instance of a zipper that twisted all the way around the body — his finest moment may have been the Clover Leaf dress from 1953. Originally commissioned for the Eisenhower Inaugural Ball of that year by Austine Hearst (though, in keeping with James’s notorious perfectionist streak, the dress was only finished several weeks after the function and Hearst wore something else), the garment was constructed from 30 pattern pieces and weighed 10 pounds. On the body, the intricate infrastructure, which was concealed under layers of black velvet and ivory faille, undulated as the woman walked. So impressive were the effects James produced that when a 2014 retrospective of his work was staged at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition incorporated X-rays, animation and digital projectors to decode his designs. “I am what is popularly regarded as the greatest couturier in the Western world,” said James to ambulance attendants hours before his death in 1978 — penniless, but convinced of his genius to the end.
Courrèges by André Courrèges, spring 1965
If his mentor, Cristóbal Balenciaga, mined the past for inspiration, André Courrèges, who worked with the house of Balenciaga for 10 years, was fixated on the future. A civil engineer by training, Courrèges, sometimes referred to as the “Le Corbusier of Couture,” employed a rigorous architectural approach, experimenting with geometry and innovating with textiles like vinyl and plastic. After making a splash with his fall 1964 collection of A-line dresses, drop-waist skirts and flat-soled go-go boots, he consolidated these ideas the following year with a new wardrobe the fashion press named “the Courrèges Bomb.” He showed exquisitely tailored pantsuits and, rather radically, above-the-knee hemlines worn with ankle boots — all rendered in his preferred palette of stark white with accents of pastel and bright red. The show was a summary of his progressive vision of fashion: He wanted to unshackle women from the strict, fussy silhouettes of the 1950s and speak to the decade’s new sense of freedom. “You don’t walk through life anymore. You run. You dance. You drive a car. You take a plane,” he once said. “Clothes must be able to move, too.”
Balenciaga by Cristóbal Balenciaga, spring 1967
In May 1968, the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga announced he was closing his salon at 10 Avenue George V in Paris after 31 years. “The life which supported couture is finished,” he said about the decision. “Real couture is a luxury which is just impossible to do anymore.” The outpouring of grief from his clients and the fashion press that followed was expected; at the time of his departure, he had achieved a legacy that included reshaping the female silhouette, achieving a sculptural purity through clever cutting and minimal construction. Case in point: his spring 1967 show, a series of austere dresses and capes, some made with only a single seam. The apotheosis — a bias-cut silk gazar wedding dress paired with a headpiece that resembled a monk’s hood — was arresting in its simplicity, exemplifying Balenciaga’s lifelong fascination with ecclesiastical vestments. In 2021, when Balenciaga’s current artistic director, Demna, staged the house’s first couture show in 53 years, he was unable to improve upon the original and simply remade the wedding dress, replacing the hood with an opaque nylon veil. Afterward, Demna said, “This dress was a manifestation of Balenciaga’s genius.”
Seditionaries by Vivienne Westwood, 1976
If the sound of the nascent punk scene in 1970s London was the snarl of the Sex Pistols, the movement’s unofficial headquarters were in Chelsea at No. 430 Kings Road. That was where Vivienne Westwood, a former schoolteacher, along with her then-boyfriend, the music producer Malcolm McLaren, and his friend Patrick Casey, opened a shop called Let it Rock in 1971. It became a laboratory of ideas, and its name and décor changed an additional four times to reflect the clothes as they evolved. It wasn’t until 1976, when the shop was reincarnated as Seditionaries, that the ideas Westwood had been experimenting with for the previous five years — bondage trousers, unraveling mohair sweaters — really caught fire. T-shirts printed with pornographic images and slogans, ripped-up dresses and tops decorated with chains and safety pins captured the rebellious mood of the moment, and Westwood and McLaren became its unofficial first couple. “I did not see myself as a fashion designer but as someone who wished to confront the rotten status quo through the way I dressed and dressed others,” said Westwood in her 2014 memoir, “Vivienne Westwood,” co-written with Ian Kelly. “Eventually this sequence of ideas culminated in punk.”
