This Thursday, November 18, Chantal Thomass, fashion icon, came to share her experience with ISG Luxury Management students during the Rendez-vous du luxe. The annual event was organized for the first time by the specialized school at the Intercontinental Paris Le Grand hotel in partnership with Luxus +. A look back at an exceptional career.
With her unmistakable style, Chantal Thomass is an iconic French fashion designer. Her career has nothing to envy the other great names in fashion, mainly men. Her story begins in the late 60s and early 70s, with various experiences in ready-to-wear. “I started by creating clothes, models. I started small, with a few clients and a few pieces, which became collections.”
Thereafter, the designer ventured more and more into lingerie, especially from 1975, when Chantal Thomass founded her eponymous company. A fundamental change in a decade marked by the feminist movements. “At the time, it was not fashionable to wear bras for example. Young girls didn’t have any, and you had to have a lot of breasts to be forced to wear them,” she says. With her, lingerie has become a fashion accessory, and has been democratized among young women.
Chantal Thomass retains a certain nostalgia for that time, especially the close ties she had woven with other designers. “I was friends with many fashion personalities, like Thierry Mugler. It was a time when there was no jealousy, where we were united. We were a real band.”
At that time, understand the 80s, Paris is losing momentum, and the Chamber of Fashion Designers wants to give it back its role as capital of fashion, under the leadership of its new president Pierre Bergé. To do this, it opens to young designers who, by their vision, disrupt the world of fashion. Chantal Thomass is one of them. Pierre Bergé had them perform in grouped fashion shows around the world, whether in France, Japan or Brazil. The career of the designer then knows a real international turn.
Since her debut and her entry into women’s lingerie, Chantal Thomass has been able to diversify and reinvent herself. One of her greatest coups was in 1999, when she decided to parade models in the windows of Galeries Lafayette, in full view of everyone. “It was a real worldwide upheaval. From one day to the next, I had the press from all over the world coming to see me and asking me for interviews, while others compared it to the windows of Amsterdam. Which was not the case! What I was doing was chic, sophisticated“, she says. she emphasizes.
In the 2000s, Chantal Thomass began to diversify her brand and her activities. She launched into the perfume, with the release of “Chantal Thomass” in 2002, or in the furniture and even in the decoration. “It is a field that has always interested me but in which I wanted to venture. So when I was offered the chance to redecorate a seven-story hotel in the 15th arrondissement, I jumped at it.”
Chantal Thomass‘ brand and style are now two of the most important names in the fashion world. The designer was able to impose her style in a highly masculine field, causing scandals and upheavals that are part of her legacy. “Wear what fits you, wear the clothes you feel good in. You have to dress for yourself.”
Read also > CHANTAL THOMASS: AN ONLINE AUCTION TO MARK HER “40 YEARS OF FASHION”.
Featured photo : © Luxus+
