While fashion designer Paul Poiret (1879-1944) was best known for rejecting the corset and throwing legendary parties – including the famous “One Thousand and Second Night” – the major retrospective devoted to him by the Museum of Decorative Arts (MAD) in Paris sheds light on lesser-known aspects of his work, especially his fashion illustrations. These true blueprints of his imagination reveal a designer who understood from an early age the power of images – not only to showcase his silhouettes, but also his entire universe.
Before becoming the “King of Fashion” or “Le Magnifique,” as he was called by his contemporaries, Poiret played with pencil and paper. Born in 1879 to a bourgeois family of drapers in the Halles district of Paris, he was sent by his father, after finishing high school, to work for an umbrella manufacturer to learn the business.
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