Christian Lacroix Spring Fashions
Spring Lacroix — prints, silk and the whole world in bloom.
Spring is the season the Lacroix palette was made for. Christian Lacroix built his house on color — drawing inspiration from diverse cultures since the ready-to-wear began in 1988, on the couture foundation of 1987 — and spring is where that inspiration moves lightest: prints at full bloom, vivid combinations, ornament carried on silk instead of velvet. This page follows the spring strand of his record in this guide. Spring is also the home season of his geography: the palette reads as Mediterranean light made wearable, and the boutiques of Arles and Aix-en-Provence are its natural showroom.
The Photos section gathers spring looks across the house's history, and the search routes in the references run Christian Lacroix spring fashion news, photo and video searches. Pair this page with the fall fashions page for the same world at autumn weight, and with the collections page for both seasons filed together. The spring search routes in the references run his spring fashion news, photo and video searches for readers tracking a particular season. The official Christian Lacroix website is linked in the references.
Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not this designer's own garments.
News, Photos & VideoCollectionsFall FashionsFashion WeekNewsProfilesRunwaySpring Fashions
The Spring Register
Every house has a season that flatters it, and spring flatters a colorist. The diverse cultures his ready-to-wear drew on from 1988 supply spring with its natural vocabulary — the prints, embroideries and saturated combinations of warmer climates and festival dress — and the couture house's discipline, established in 1987, keeps the exuberance tailored. In the spring collections the famous richness sheds its winter layers and shows its construction: joyful, but engineered. Construction is the spring story's quiet half: prints must be matched at seams, embroidery placed so it survives a lighter ground, color combined without the dark anchors fall provides — the couture hand showing precisely where the cloth is thinnest.
The accessories complete the season's picture. The jewelry, handbags, shoes, glasses, scarves and ties he launched in 1989 are spring's natural companions — a printed scarf, a bright shoe, glasses against the southern light — and the spring photographs in the Photos section show the complete look his boutiques were opened to sell. The complete look is spring's sales logic as well: a client could leave an Arles or Paris boutique dressed head to toe in the season from a single rail, which is what the 1989 boutique openings and the 1989 accessories launch were built to make possible.
Spring on the Calendar
His spring collections arrive through the calendar the fashion week page covers: presented in Paris, reviewed, and carried to the boutiques opened from 1989 within Paris, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, London, Geneva and Japan. For this house the geography has a springtime poetry of its own — the season's clothes reaching Arles and Aix-en-Provence, the southern cities of his home ground, where spring arrives first and suits his palette longest. It is also the season where his inspiration from diverse cultures is most literal: festival and warm-climate dress translate to spring with the least alteration of any season in his wardrobe.
Read with the runway page for the spring shows in sequence, and with the profiles page for the founding chronology — 1987, 1988, 1989 — that made the spring collections possible.
Photos
Common Questions
What characterizes Christian Lacroix spring collections?
His signature color and ornament at their lightest: prints and vivid combinations drawing inspiration from diverse cultures, in the spring register of the wardrobe he built from the 1987 couture house and the ready-to-wear of 1988.
What separates Lacroix spring from Lacroix fall?
Spring lightens everything — fabric, layering and mood — while the fall fashions page in this series shows the same inspirations at full weight in velvet and brocade. The collections page holds the shared view.
Where do his spring collections sit in the house's story?
Within the seasonal rhythm established at the founding: couture from 1987, ready-to-wear from 1988, and boutiques from 1989 — Paris, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, London, Geneva and Japan — carrying each spring to his clients.