As the festivities of Paris fashion week come to an end, it’s worth remembering how Paris Fashion Week USED to celebrate in the days of Jacques de Bascher…
This month is the 33rd Anniversary of the notorious Moratoire Noir party organized by Jacques de Bascher which introduced the fashion world – for the first time – to the darker edges of the Parisian suburbs and Mapplethorpian quantities of leather.
As the Washington Post wrote at the time; “It was planned as a “nice party for all Karl Lagerfeld’s friends,” explained Count Xavier de Cadtella, who was dressed in a fluorescent orange-and-silver Star Wars getup. He was leaning over the catwalk above the black-walled, barren warehouse lit only by criss-crossing green laser beams. Below, more than 3,000 of the “friends,” all dressed in black as required on the invitations, gyrated to blasting electronic music.
The scene was La Main Bleue, Europe’s biggest disco located in Montreuil on the edge of Paris, an area where many African workers live. Started by Jean Michel Mouhac as a club for blacks, it soon became the chic place for fashion stars and swingy socialites on certain week-nights, much the way harlem once was the “in” place in New York.
Castella, a wealthy architecture student from Belgium, and Jacques de Bascher de Beaumarchais, a film-maker and close friend of Lagerfeld, had sent 3,200 engraved invitations to fashion designers, models and groupies, the leather crowd and the punks. “I know the leaders of all groups,” insisted Bascher, in a Star Wars suit to match that of his co-host. “They are all my friends and all so intelligent and nice, so why shouldn’t they get along?
Fashion is in the streets, so why give a private party? We invited every kind of person we know. They all admire Karl. Lagerfeld was there. So were Paloma Picasso, Phillippe Niarchos and a batch of the nouvelle vague (not yet established) designers. The rest were a costumed mix heavy on black leather jackets and leather hats. There were a handful of black-robed “monks” a man in a black cape and black jockey shorts, a girl in black fishnet tights and stiletto heels.
Leaning against a wall near the door watching the show was a film production assistant in a leather head covering with slits for the eyes and a zipper for the mouth. His friend, a flower vendor, wore black leather shorts and a bare chest. They were neither punks nor Fascists, said the masked one. “Leather is for sex, not politics.”
Appearing more publically, by small degrees are the leather crowd of homosexuals, who till recently have stayed totally underground.
What The Washington Post fails to report is that highlight of the evening was an on-stage cabaret would scandalize le tout Paris, and would later be written about Alicia Drake’s marvellous “The Beautiful Fall“.
The evening was reported in rather more measured tones by “Bernard Ozer, vice-president of a hugh American fashion buying service, who also surveyed the scene. “I didn’t come to judge, only to view,” he said adding that from such extremes a designer might find an idea for a new collar or a color. “It may well affect the New York designers,” he said thoughtfully. “But I hope not.”"
These days things seem much more tame…
Much more on the Main Bleue / Palace scene of Paris in the 1970s
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