Madame Gres

Germaine Émilie Krebs, known as Madame Grès (Paris, 1903 — La Valette-du-Var, 1993), began her career as a sculptor mainly influenced by the minimalist trend and for the Greek garments..

She made her debut in 1933 as a dressmaker in Paris under the name Alix Barton (Maison Alix). Her style gradually established itself, especially when it comes to evening wear. She also made theatrical costumes, such as the one used for the play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place , by J. Giraudoux. In 1937, her creations presented at the World's Fair in Paris earned her the first haute couture prize. In 1942 she created the firm Grès. In 1959, she launched the perfume Cabochard , years later in 1990, she would create another fragrance, Cabotine . Awarded the Golden Needle in 1976, she designed a ready-to-wear collection in 1980, although this experience only lasted two years. In 1982 she left the perfume industry to dedicate two more years to haute couture, a business that she ended up selling in 1984 to Bernard Tapie. In turn, the company was later acquired, in 1988, by the Japanese group Yagi Tsusho Limited. In the fall of 1994 an exhibition was dedicated to her at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Despite being recognized as a true couture genius by most of her professional colleagues, both in her time and today, it was not until 2011 that a retrospective dedicated to her work was organized in Paris. The exhibition Madame Grès, la couture à l'oeuvre, presented at the Antoine Bourdelle Museum in the French capital (March 25 – July 24, 2011) shows a set of 80 representative models of his long career, which ran from 1933 to 1988, plus numerous photographs and sketches. The catalog of this exhibition, very exhaustive, includes the fundamental aspects of her professional career.

Madame Grès declared on various occasions that her true vocation was sculpture, for which reason she modeled the fabrics as if they were stone, sculpting them. Her work, very creative and original, beyond fashion, is inspired by the ancient world and also by North African and Indian subcontinent cultures. The apparent simplicity of it hides a very complex elaboration. She made costumes with sculptural qualities, with hardly any seams, which seem to be modeled on her body and are characterized by refined lines and highly elaborate volumes. These are unique, timeless pieces, often with pleats, drapes and asymmetrical shapes, in pure colours. The evening dresses in faille and taffeta stand out (fabrics that she masterfully worked on), which are the best-known facet of her work, as well as the knitwear models and the coat pieces made of double-sided wool..