“Chez Poiret”
This gorgeous ink and watercolor on paper illustration from 1912 was made by the French Art Deco illustrator, George Barbier. Titled “Chez Poiret”, this piece displays fashionable evening wear from the French designer, Paul Poiret.
Barbier was a favorite among the haute couture fashion world of Paris and illustrated many of their clothing advertisements. This particular painting graced the cover of the fashion magazine, Les Modes, in April of 1912. It served as visual marketing for Poiret’s style.
Paul Poiret was a French fashion designer who lived from 1879 to 1944. He was known as “‘Le Magnifique” and modernized fashion through the abandonment of the corset, redefining the silhouette of a woman. Additionally, he had a unique technique of draping rather than tailoring outfits. As seen in this piece here, Poiret was heavily influenced by Orientalism, an imitation by artists and writers in Europe and America of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures.
Poiret was born in Paris to a poor family. From a very early age, Poiret’s main interest was in designing clothes. At his first job as an apprentice to an umbrella maker, Poiret would collect the scraps of material from the umbrella patterns and make clothes for his sister’s dolls.
Poiret’s first break came as a teenager when the well-respected dressmaker, Madeleine Chéruit, purchased some of his designs. By 1896, Poiret had a job with Jacques Doucet, a well-known dress maker, where his designs did quite well. He moved on from there to work for the House of Worth, where, surprisingly, Poiret’s dresses were a bit too eccentric for them.
By 1903, Poiret had his own fashion house, and his eccentricities and marketing made his works highly sought after. He even gave a personal fashion show at 10 Downing Street in London to the United Kingdom Prime Minister and his wife.
Poiret’s success started to wane during his absence from the fashion industry while he was serving in WWI. When he was released from his war duties, the fashion world had moved on and his patterns seemed dated and old-fashioned. Poiret’s fashion house closed in 1929 and when he died in 1944 at 65 years of age, he was mostly forgotten.
“Chez Poiret” is currently in the collections of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Hague, in the Netherlands.
For more on George Barbier, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
