Lavish Lacroix turns curator for 200-year look at fashion

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Christian Lacroix, arguably the most extravagant couturier in Paris, never intended to be a fashion designer. His dream was to be a museum curator, a wish come true this week via a breath-taking walk through two centuries of fashion.

For the past couple of years, Lacroix, 56 this year, spent most of his Friday mornings picking through 80,000 items of clothing old and new stocked at France's Decorative Arts Museum next door to the Louvre.

To mark the 20th anniversary of his own couture house this year, the museum had offered a show of his own fanciful lavish designs. But Lacroix declined.

"A self-promoting retrospective would have been a bit vulgar," he told AFP. "I wanted to show that my work is based on the wealth of museums such as this one."...