Paul Poiret Research Paper

Paul Poiret was born in 1879, to a French cloth merchant. He exhibited his artistic instincts from a young age when he started fashioning clothes for mannequins, from the leftover scraps of silk at the umbrella maker where he was an apprentice. He continued drawing and sewing designs in his spare time, and upon encouragement from a friend, took some of them to a woman named Mademoiselle Choruit at the Maison Raundnizt Soeurs. Her admiration for him was shown by the fact that she bought twelve of his designs, and encouraged him to return with more. Over time his reputation and clientele grew, however, his big break came when the designer Jacques Doucet offered him a job at the Maison Doucet, where his first design, a red cloth cape sold four

However, he had to leave work to serve in military at the outbreak of World War I. By the time he returned in 1919, his fortunes were overturned and his business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Other designers, especially Chanel, had filled the void in the market, putting an emphasis on superior workmanship along the way. Paul, whose clothes were made in layers, was stubborn in the face of this new market trend and this led to a sharp decline in his popularity. By the 1930s, his fame was at an all time low, his couture house closed and his stock by weight as rags. Hence, one of the most revered designers of the early 1900s found his name in oblivion, making ends meet by odd jobs.

Although Paul’s life ended in fashion obscurity, at his peak, he was one of the most influential designers in the western hemisphere. His methods, unorthodox as they may have been, had the impact that he desired and once he was able to win over the customers, his products were always in design. As for the the cloak that had earned from ire from the Russian Princess would go on to become one of his best selling designs. As Paul himself put