Didier may not be a household name, but in the international fashion industry, he’s a legend. It’s been GFM’s great fortune to hear him speak about the history of the industry and his unique place at the center of it, when he opens the Paris seminar every year.
Co-founder of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, colleague to Givenchy, chairman of Thierry Mugler, and Chairman of the Fédération Français de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, and of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Corture, Didier has also served as Director of Studies and Dean of Professional Staff at Institut Français de la Mode since 1985.
His History of International Fashion – recently translated into English – is the ultimate authority on the history of haute couture, leading to the origin of ready-to-wear and manufacturing, and finally to the internationalization of the industry as we know it today. Didier hasn’t written a history of fashion, and his lecture to GFM students doesn’t follow that narrative. Instead, he discusses designers as instigators of society-changing concepts; for example, Chanel’s disruption of structured garments through the introduction of new fabrics and silhouettes; the Christian Dior business model and the start of licensing in the U.S.; and YSL’s brilliant creation of ready-to-wear collections inspired by couture. Didier has the remarkable ability to rise above the often-repeated stories of glamour and indulgence (although he’s familiar with those as well) to describe businesses devoted to beauty and high fashion but starved for cash, and opportunistic governments that use the apparel industry as economic protection. There are very few in the apparel industry – anywhere in the world – who have the comprehensive knowledge and experience of Didier, and even fewer who have the generosity to share it.
“This book . . . aspires to be the story of the creation, the evolution, and the implosion of the fashion trade and to offer perspectives on a profession that, like any other social body, defines itself by its origins as by its current economic context.” – Didier Grumbach
Please see “Seminars” on the Global Fashion Management website for more information.