“The crux of this exhibition is the marriage of Christian Lacroix’s couture legacy with his passion for the theatre. These costumes exemplify his level of mastery through unimaginable attention to detail,” says Gomes. “[They] have the same technique and skill level as those shown on the runway, manifesting in these layered, textural pieces that emphasize Peer Gynt’s fantasy world. Whether the costumes are lavishly embellished or aged and dyed, Lacroix achieves this in a realistic, well-done way.”
The acclaimed fashion photographer is hours from opening her new exhibit—“This Side of Paradise,” a retrospective at SCAD FASH in Atlanta—and her custom black metallic paneling is nowhere to be found. “Apparently it got lost in Korea,” shrugs Unwerth, who favors slim black suits that make her look like a lion tamer. “So they brought a bunch of hot pink glitter to the museum instead. The SCAD students sprayed it on the walls themselves. Like, a billion pieces of pink glitter. A bomb of it. They made it beautiful even though it was [a] crazy [amount] work, so now we have the show.”
“The show” contains dozens of the German snapper’s original photographic prints, including iconic portraits of Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera, along with va-va-voomclose-ups of lacquered lips and unlaced corsets that helped build von Unwerth’s reputation for air-kissed imagery that mixes frothy decadence with hints of deviance.
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Britney Spears, shot by Ellen von Unwerth.
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“I always make up a story for my pictures,” says the 69-year-old. “It’s like, ‘This girl goes to a party, but then she spills all the champagne,’ or ‘This girl has a rich boyfriend, but it goes bad, so she needs a job and ends up walking dogs all over Paris. But the dogs end up walking her.’ For me, the beauty always happens when something goes a little bit wrong.” (That includes the Great Atlanta Glitter Emergency. “It’s even better because it’s hand-done,” she says. “Now, it’s a lot like a diamond.”)
Born in war-bombed Frankfurt, von Unwerth became a magician’s assistant in high school before becoming a commercial model. “They always wanted me for hair products,” she smiles. “I did have very beautiful hair.” But she was far more fascinated by the other side of the camera. “That’s where you had control!” she laughs. On a modeling trip to Kenya, she brought her small camera along and came back with portraits of the local Maasai women that earned her a six-image spread in the French magazine Jill. Campaigns with the British activist and designer Katharine Hamnett followed.
But the photographer’s major break came from this very magazine.“[ELLE] called me and said, ‘There is this nice German girl, like you! Maybe go take some pictures of her at her house.’” That’s how von Unwerth ended up meeting Claudia Schiffer in 1989, sensing she could be more than “just the nice girl next door,” and styling her like Brigitte Bardot. The resulting ELLE photos convinced Guess to give them both a campaign, and the rest is fashion history.
Beyoncé, shot by Ellen von Unwerth.
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Von Unwerth credits her revealing imagery to the on-set camaraderie she cultivates with women like Beyoncé, Lana del Rey, and Bella Hadid, all of whom she shot at the beginning of their stardom. “Because I was a model, and, you know, a girl, I know what it’s like for people to just tell you where to go and what to do. As a model, they never let me move around on a set, so now I always want movement, and music, and fun…and I never say, ‘You look bad.’ No. I say, ‘Great!’ and that allows them the freedom to be great in their own way.”
That’s what happened in 2003, when a 21-year-old Britney Spears was in her Toxic era of ice blonde hair and shiny vinyl bodices. Posing at Nell’s nightclub (RIP!) in downtown Manhattan, the pop star’s cavalcade was gunning for a ’50s pin-up look until von Unwerth took matters into her own hands. “Yes, the fifties are great, but I said to her, ‘Nobody has seen a Britney in the ’20s.It will look so beautiful, like a Berlin nightclub in a dream. And it will be great because, you know, you will look different…now Britney, she is great. She has style! So she let us style her like a silent film actress, and she looks so vulnerable, so soulful. It was a brilliant shoot because she faced herself in the mirror. She is beautiful and she is brave.”
The photographer urges other women to be brave, too—especially when it seems like everyone is gunning for the same opportunities at work or in a creative field. “There’s always going to be competition, and competition is everywhere in life, with everybody,” she says. “I think even my gardener is jealous of the other gardener. Of course it’s a challenge, but also, it drives you. It pushes you to say, ‘What am I really good at? Let me explore more and try harder.’ Jealousy also lets you say ‘who gives a shit about them, I’m going to work on me.’” She laughs, going on to describe being a successful woman among others as “a pain, but when it pinches you, it wakes you up a bit. The pinch gets you moving. So you say ‘thank you,’ and you believe it’s good.”
A print by the artist… and glitter.
Colin Douglas Gray
Those in Atlanta can see von Unwerth’s SCAD FASH exhibit through Jan. 8, 2024. Meanwhile, Manhattan dwellers can visit the photographer’s prints at Verōnika, the gilded fine dining hangout that’s just named her its debut Artist in Residence. But first, von Unwerth has a date with some SCAD graduate students—at a nearby Atlanta strip club. “They created these very inventive clothes, and so I thought, why not go shoot them [there]? When I’m home [in Paris], I don’t really go to parties—I prefer to just get to bed on time. But I am here, and beauty is like a magnet. It pulls you sometimes. You don’t even have to know why.”
As I wrap up our interview, von Unwerth gives me the customary European double kiss. Hours later in the mirror, a stray fleck of glitter is still stuck to my cheek.
Editor at Large, ELLE.com
“Her beauty and her brain go not together.” —William Shakespeare
The iconic designer once told a good friend he only had about three pieces by the French couturier — but after Alaïa’s death in 2017, that friend, renowned curator and director of the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa Olivier Saillard, discovered there were actually over 900.
Unless you were alive between the 1940s and 1980s, it’s unlikely you’ve seen a Madame Grès original in person. While images of them exist in the archives of advertisements and Vogue, the garments themselves have been collected and preserved less. Alaïa’s dedication to collecting them, then, contributes massively to the preservation of fashion history.
“The Art of Draping” — presented in Atlanta, GA in collaboration with Fondation Azzedine Alaïa — engulfs visitors in beauty and wonder. It also tells a story of a deep connection across time and space for two great designers.
The show-stopping velvet cutout dress
Photo: Courtesy of SCAD
Towering at the entrance are four black dresses that stretch to the floor with a regal sprit. Draped fabrics around the neck flow behind like a cape. A low-cut gown flaunts the lower back, while an asymmetrical cap-sleeve style flows down with the grace of a waterfall.
Walking deeper into the exhibit, you face an outpour of draped beauty. Richly textured red velvet traces a mannequin’s silhouette before skimming the floor as if to tease it. Crinkled gowns in pale yellow command one corner of the room, while sage-green garments capture viewers in another. A most striking black velvet cutout dress outlines the upper bodice with sensual-yet-simple cutouts. As if curving into a whirlpool anchored by the chest, one marigold-orange style’s intricate lines create a voluminous collar fit for a queen.
Each Madame Grès design possesses the power to lure any onlooker with its meticulous details, as if a siren’s soul was captured in clothing.
Born Germaine Émilie Krebs in 1903, Madame Grès grew up wanting to be a sculptor, but her parents didn’t allow it. As she developed her skills in fashion design, she kept her desire to sculpt close, using fabrics to mold the feminine body. Her designs were minimalist and timeless, lending her garments the nickname of “goddess gowns.”
With a style and design language so strong, Madame Grès’ clothes were indistinguishably hers. She became a leading French couturier from the 1930s through the 1980s; Alaïa rose to prominence during the same period, almost receiving a passed baton of couture.
Bright and shining from the corner of the room, this trio of gowns flaunts the talent of Madame Grès across varying silhouettes.
Photo: Courtesy of SCAD
“She was obsessed with timelessness — I think [Alaïa] was also looking for timelessness inside the work of Madame Grès, in order to understand how you could be timeless,” Saillard says.
Madame Grès used lots of black and white, for example; when it came to ornamentation, she focused on draping the body rather than using prints and embroidery. Alaïa was similarly artful, his work known for timelessly celebrating the body with a foundation of sensuality. (He was even called the “king of cling” in the 1980s, with Uschka Pittroff once saying that wearing his clothes was “like being in a man’s passionate embrace.”) Alaïa sculpted the body like Madame Grès, but leaned into a broader range of techniques.
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His ardent collecting of Madame Grès garments (and her photos) is evidence of his curiosity and reverence for her style, which also inspired Cristobal Balenciaga.
Like Madame Grès, Alaïa was enthralled with fashion design from a lens of sculpture. Like her, his career spanned half a century, impressing a legacy of beauty and creativity. In line with her rebellious spirit, Alaïa was unafraid to call out the fashion industry’s habit of overproduction and consumption, instead following his own fashion calendar.
“It was a question of line: Azzedine was absolutely obsessed with doing clothes without any visible seams,” Sailard says, noting that both wanted to be sculptors. “The essence of Azzedine is the body.”
Olivier Saillard curated the exhibit from more than 900 pieces discovered across Alaïa’s extensive collections.
Courtesy of Savannah College of Arts Design
“Doing an exhibition is to choose the first dress,” Saillard says. “The very first moment of an exhibition is very important.”
Curating an exhibition from over 900 pieces is no easy task, especially when working with the collections of a lost friend. Alaïa’s apartments throughout Paris would be so filled with items, Saillard remembers, there were rooms one couldn’t enter.
“It became a privilege to discover the collection, but it was also very sad,” he says. “There’s a moment to collect — and Alaïa collected a lot — and now, it’s a moment for me to preserve, to show. But in fact, there’s an ambiguity between the joy. I have to show them without him.”
Lud models a dress by Alix, Madame Grès’ first alias under which she opened a French couture house.
Photo: Courtsey of the Horst P. Horst Estate and The Art Design Project Gallery
“The Art of Draping” follows up the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film’s many rich offerings, which have included exhibits on and by Christian Siriano, Ruth E. Carter, Carolina Herrera, Pierre Cardin and Guo Pei. This latest project traces synchrony and hints at the undercurrent which connected two great designers across space and time.
“I have to confess. When you see the history of fashion through the great architects — like Balenciaga, Vionnet, Grès, Azzadine, Comme des Garçons — it’s another thing,” Saillard says. “I really think fashion could win something by going back to the clothes, not to the image.”
As Virgil Abloh broke fashion ground applying his architectural philosophies to fashion, Madame Grès crossed disciplines in a similar way to masterfully infuse garments with her sculptor’s touch. As the exhibit illustrates, Alaïa reveled in it, following in her footsteps.
“The Art of Draping” is on view at the SCAD Fash Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta, GA through June 30, 2023.
Disclosure: SCAD paid for Fashionista’s travel and accommodations to visit the exhibit.
