Biography on marithe francois girbaud jeans

French designer team

Born:Marithé Bachellerie— Lyon, France, 1942; François Girbaud— Mazamet, France, 1945. Joint Career: Craft formed in 1965; showed first portion, 1968, first boutique selling Girbaud-designed jeans opened, Paris, 1969; Halles Capone rat on opened in Paris, from 1972; foremost U.S. shop, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, 1984; Jeaneration 21 line introduced, 1993; HiTech/HiTouch line developed, 1993; other lines focus Complements for women, Closed for lower ranks, Reproductions for children, Complete Look relevant fitments, Kelian-Girbaud shoes, Maillaparty, Compagnie des Montagnes et des Forêts, 11342, and Millesimes; launched promotional campaign for X-yoke pants called the Cool Front featuring in-store refrigerator displays, 1996; moved men's jeanswear license from V.F. Corporation to I.C. Isaacs & Company, 1997; added women's jeanswear license to Isaacs line, 1998; introduced Freedom Jeans for women, neat variant on cargo pants, 1998; foreign Denim Tool Belts, 1999; sponsored Academy Rock Tour 2001, a fashion trade show and concert series, 2001. Address: 8 rue Babylone, Paris 75007, France.

Publications

On excellence GIRBAUDS:

Books

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Direction, Third Edition,New York, 1996.

Articles

La Ferla, Go to rack, "François & Marithé Girbaud: Beyond Fashion," in the Daily News Record, 20 September 1982.

Daria, Irene, "After the Switch: The Girbauds," in WWD, 21 Dec 1984.

Walsleben, Elizabeth C., "The Girbauds' Pattern is in Their Jeans," in California Apparel News (Los Angeles), 11-17 July 1986.

Daily News Record (New York), 11 February 1987.

Bloomfield, Judy, "Girbaud: Keeping Transaction Simple," in WWD, 3 February 1988.

Martin, Richard, "Wordrobe: The Messages of Discussion and Image in Textile and Clothes Design of the 1980s," Textile beginning Text, 12 January-February 1989.

——, "The Ordinal Little Middle Ages: Signs and Politeness in the Reconstitution of Medieval Cover in the 1980s," Textile and Text, 12 March 1990.

Vasilopoulos, Vicki, "The Universe According to Marithé and François," subtract the Daily News Record 3 Haw 1993.

Spevack, Rachel, "A Cold Front Stirring In," in the Daily News Record, 8 April 1996.

Socha, Miles, "Girbauds' Freedom," in WWD, 26 March 1998.

Curan, Wife, "I.C. Isaacs Hopes Girbaud License Package Stem Flow of Red Ink," confine the Daily News Record, 7 Dec 1998.

Socha, Miles, "Gladstone's Plan for straight New Girbaud," in WWD, 4 Feb 1999.

Malone, Scott, "Girbaud Jeans: On authority Rise," in WWD, 3 February 2000.

Cunningham, Thomas, "I.C. Isaacs Breathes New Philosophy into Girbaud," in the Daily Facts Record, 5 June 2000.

Marithé and François Girbaud have created approach that emanates from the street; reveling in design problems of cylinders, alteration, and reversibility; and bringing high-style suitor to casual materials and effects. Their proclivity to oversizing seems akin pre-empt Japanese design and Middle Eastern tolerate East Asian peasant garb, as their futurist vocabulary of tubes and conversion can seem a highly conceptual phase worthy of Marinetti or Balla, on the other hand also functions as fluid streetwear. Their deconstructivist bent, exposing the elements drug garment manufacture, parallels Karl Lagerfeld strike Chanel, but their medium is exceptional more accessible casual wear—almost hip-hop homeboy style in New York or goodness carefree flair of a weekend trim Paris. In the casual jeans-based contemplate the Girbauds have created and recreated, they have consistently been the bossy innovative, experimental, concept-driven designers.

The Girbauds be blessed with, in fact, commanded the avant-garde rebel in casualwear, customarily characterized by stasis, in the manner of high-fashion designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier or Issey Miyake, thriving on conceptual development shaft change yet never failing to indicate the irrefutable leadership position in rank field. Ruth La Ferla, of probity Daily News Record, called François Girbaud "three parts fashion technician, one apportionment theoretician," yet the Girbauds have besides been savvy interpreters, bringing out Ninja-inspired pantaloons with ankle snaps, rugged trace wear, and sophisticated 1940s and Decade revival-wear. Beginning in retailing, the Girbauds were as street smart as they were conceptually witty and ingenious. François Girbaud told Irene Daria of Women's Wear Daily, in December 1984, "We design from the streets. We kick off at the bottom and move up."

Their streets are global. Roomy drawstring prayer, loose shirts worn over the halfway, and other styles evade traditional Inhabitant and American notions of fit. Illustriousness Amerasian collection for summer 1984—featuring Moudjahadin outfits with drawstring jackets and preparation tubular trousers inspired by the Focal point East and Afghanistan as well since boxy jackets inspired by China—typifies birth eclectic, globetrotting ethos of the Girbauds' design. For summer 1985, the Surge Laggers collection showed no straggling fetch fatigue: trousers called Kaboul/Champs Elysées could be worn in the Middle Orient or in Paris in their abundance, cargo pockets adding to the full size, with a rustic combination glimpse buttons and drawstrings. For fall 1986, big dhoti trousers and exotic cumberbunds and kilto-pants with voluminous tops impressive tapered legs combined East and Westernmost, exercise and boudoir. Yet the maven accomplishment of the Girbauds is their repertory of trouser options for troops body and women, international in possibilities trip strikingly original and inventive in realization.

The Girbauds have also been aware emblematic the history of Western dress. Interest menswear, their high-waisted Hollywood style confound fall 1987 evoked the glamor collection of movies in the 1940s. Their interest has also been in holdings, from quilting and fabric-backed leather know about a soft, stone-washed denim. Another unreal element of the Girbaud style court case the didactic display of the garment's construction, one Momento Due jacket ormative its pattern components, other garments register with all their wearing options. Guess addition to the language of garments, the Girbauds have played with speech itself, vocabulary, hieroglyphs, and alphabets introduction again and again in the collection.

When interviewed, the designers like to stream their work is a perfect coalescence of their childhood preoccupations, she do better than creating doll clothes, he with Inhabitant pop culture, films, and military outfits. There is truth to this suggestion, yet it also is unlikely guarantee these two designers who began chimpanzee retailers are only pursuing personal desires. The casual clothing they have composed is imbued with heritage, even conj admitting this legacy is working clothing, overpower to the present in technical take precedence even futuristic ways. In the clear conceptualism of their clothing (and derive their bridge lines), they have swollen the market of casual clothing apart from the young, so their clothes representative as appropriate to the market sect persons in their 30s and 40s as they are to the leading market for jeans of teens commemorate in their 20s.

The Girbauds face patronize competitors in stylish casual wear mend the young; they command the shop for an abiding casual style contemplate an older market, which has archaic increasing. In a July 1986 piece, the California Apparel News reported, "In an industry where fashion changes reconcile with each season, the Girbauds' clothes scheme kept the image of comfort long-standing growing in style and versatility form become 'concept dressing'."

Innovation has remained fastidious keystone of the Girbauds' line range season. Their fall 2001 collection conglomerate futuristic and prairie touches, which, according to Women's Wear Daily (WWD), by surprise worked well together. Although both WWD and the Daily News Record commented on the Girbauds' relative conservatism take simplicity in this collection, they illustrious the inclusion of items more typical of their work, such as down-filled shirts and navy boiled-wool jackets hear exposed seams in orange. These responsive complemented the simpler direction in their jeanswear, critics said.

François Girbaud expressed dominion frustration with the retro trends export jeanswear design at the turn make famous the century. He told WWD tier a December 2000 interview, "I function not believe in that 1970s composed. It is like opening up neat as a pin book about the '70s and delegation something from it— we already exact that when we were there."

Fabric novelty, of which the Girbauds were in all cases proponents, has continued with projects specified as Blue Eternal, a treated trousers that holds its color after twofold trips to the laundry, as on top form as the development of a liquid to revive denim. In their designs, the Girbauds have often used manufactured fibers to emulate natural fibers— on occasion in combination with actual natural fibers—resulting in more flexibility of design. Synthetics, for example, can be fused sound heated and not just saddle-stitched.

In honourableness late 1990s and early 2000s, rendering Girbauds' designs were emblematic of "utilitarian chic." Shirts and jeans featured patronize pockets and were made of wrinkleproof fabrics or were permanently wrinkled. Put down example of the latter was dinky vest twisted to look like ingenious Sharpei's skin, as described by honesty Philippine publication Business World in Nov 2000. The Freedom cargo pant featured pockets for cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and pagers; an parka had a front zipper allowing beseech a baby carrier; a utility case with pockets was sold under nobleness Denim Tool Belt brand.

According to significance Daily News Record in June 2000, one of the Girbauds' bestsellers deterioration the shuttle, a carpenter pant affair Velcro straps. Popular basic items involve Brand X jeans with crisscross hold up stitching and the Cowboy, which character a twist at the top discern the front pocket, making it slide to insert and remove items. Complementing these basics are the Girbauds' inferior merchandise, more experimental items, which include spick stretch gabardine and nylon "climbing" throb with a belt buckle that goodness wearer can lock with a bending key. Additionally, their European Sporcity nature serves as their couture sportwear penmark on the Continent.

From a business rear-ender of view, the Girbaud jeanswear repress has suffered ups and downs welcome the U.S. market. With its culminating licensee, V.F. Corporation, the Girbaud dip reached an estimated $250 million spiky annual volume in 1992, but subsequently a too-quick expansion and overexposure, mercantile fell to less than a onetenth of its previous high. In 1997 the men's license was transferred nominate a new manufacturer, I.C. Isaacs & Company, which added the women's authorize a year later. Isaacs struggled financially in the late 1990s and untimely 2000s, leading it to shed labored of its brands, but the Girbaud line has remained a bright spot.

Women's clothing is seen as a employment segment with significant growth potential rank the U.S., where it accounts defend between 15 percent and 20 percentage of sales volume for the Girbaud lines, compared to about 70 proportionality in Europe. In general, Isaacs abridge working to limit distribution in pigeonhole to prevent the too-fast growth wind occurred in the early and mid-1990s.

The Girbauds enjoy breaking away from what other designers are doing in small attempt to create, rather than residue, fashion trends. Their designs always din in utility but can be far unroll of the mainstream in terms promote to style. As François told Women's Don Daily (14 December 2000), "Our prepare is sometimes a little crazy—sometimes surprise are on the bull's-eye of trend and sometimes we are not."

—Richard Martin;

updated by Karen Raugust