Madame Grès

Madame Grès (1903–1993) born Germaine Émilie Krebs, also known as Alix Barton and Alix, was a leading French couturier of her generation and costume designer. She founded the former haute couture fashion house "Grès" as well as the associated perfume house "Parfums Grès" which still exists today in Switzerland. Remembered as the "Sphinx of Fashion", Grès was notoriously secretive about her personal life and was seen as a workaholic with a furious attention to detail, therefore she preferred to let her work do the talking. Called the "master of the wrapped and draped dress" and "queen of drapery", Grès is best known for her floor-length draped Grecian goddess gowns. Grès's simplistic and minimalistic draping techniques and her attention and respect for the female body have had a lasting effect on the haute couture and fashion industry and she is credited for inspiring a number of recent designers.

Biography

Early life

Madame Grès was born and raised in Paris, France. Early in life, Grès studied painting and sculpting. Grès originally dreamed of becoming a sculptress but after many objections made by her family she shifted her interests towards the art of fashion design and clothing making. Using her formal training in sculpture, Grès was able to apply her sculpting techniques to her fabric forms. Grès's first job in the industry of fashion was a woman's hat maker where she excelled until she began focusing on couture dressmaking. After distinguishing her area of interest, Grès received her early training in haute couture dressmaking at the fashion house, Maison Premet, a house known for requiring extreme perfection.

Gräsö

Gräsö is an island in Östhammar Municipality, off the coast of Uppland province, and a village on the island. The island lies in the south of the Gulf of Bothnia. It has an area of 93 square kilometres (36 sq mi) and a population of about 800. The island has a mixture of fields and woodland. It is a popular summer resort.

Location

Gräsö and the smaller island of Örskär to the north are the most northerly of the Roslagen islands, the northern part of the Stockholm archipelago. Gräsö may be reached by ferry from Öregrund on the mainland to the west. The island has a gently rolling terrain with woods mixed with cultivated fields and pasture. There is abundant wildlife including fox, badger, deer and elk. Sea eagles nest on the island.

History

In the past the people lived mainly on fishing, hunting and farming. There is a graveyard from the Viking age in the grazed pasture to the east of Gräsö gård, with 55 graves. This was probably beside a trading post that later gained a more settled farming population practicing arable farming and raising cattle. In 1548 Gustav Vasa evicted the famers from the region and founded a new estate at Gräsö gård. In the early 1600s the farmstead was converted into a manor.

Grès

Grès was a French haute couture fashion house. Parfums Grès is the associated perfume house, which still exists, and is now based in Switzerland.

History

Germaine Émilie Krebs (1903–1993), known as Alix Barton and later as "Madame Grès", relaunched her design house under the name Grès in Paris in 1942. Prior to this, she worked as "Alix" or "Alix Grès" during the 1930s. Formally trained as a sculptress, she produced haute couture designs for an array of fashionable women, including the Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Dolores del Río. Her signature was cut-outs on gowns that made exposed skin part of the design, yet still had a classical, sophisticated feel. She was renowned for being the last of the haute couture houses to establish a ready-to-wear line, which she called a "prostitution".

The name Grès was a partial anagram of her husband's first name and alias. He was Serge Czerefkov, a Russian painter, who left her soon after the house's creation. Grès enjoyed years of critical successes but, after Grès herself sold the business in the 1980s to Yagi Tsucho, a Japanese company, they hired Lloyd Klein as the artistic director for the entire house supervising 46 licencies between Paris and Japan , at the time Klein was offered one of the highest salaries of 150.000 FRF per month and an annual fee of 12 Million FRF after the death of Madame, Lloyd Klein left the house to continue his collections in New York . In 2012, the last Grès store in Paris was closed.

Grès (disambiguation)

Grès or Gres may refer to:

See also