✂-Designer's Tip of The Day-Patou

Jean Patou, born in Normandy in 1880, but it was in the 1920's that he became known as one of the greatest French Fashion Designer's of our time.
The House of  Patou still presents exactly the same face to its clients as it did in the twenties when the salons were first designed for Jean Patou.  It was in these salons that one of the most famous names in Paris couture in the twenties practised what Edna, Mrs Woolman Chase, then Vogue's editor in cheif, described as 'high art and heavy industry'.  
He was known for designing "sports clothes", amusing cubist sweaters and bathing suits, but he was most recognized for inventing Joy, promoted as the most expensive scent in the world.  Three generations later, Joy is still one of the most popular perfumes.
His monument is our freedom to wear comfortable, stylish sports clothes.  Style is permanent and timeless, fashion is short-lived, and Patou was always more concerned with fashion, with the moment and the mood, than he was with timelessness.  Patou was once asked what he thought would be fashionable in the future.  "Fashion is not a subject of deduction, like a system of logic," he replied. "It is made up of a thousand different influences.  Fashion is a living thing and, in consequence, evolves from day to day, from hour to hour and from minute to minute."   Jean Patou's minute spanned a decade.

Patou died in 1936.  But every time a woman buys a bottle of Joy, every time a striped sweater is pulled down over a pleated skirt, every time real sports clothes are used as an inspiration for fashion design, Patou survives.


Source: PATOU by Meredith Etherington-Smith