Fath

Jacques (1912-1954). French designer and creator of the fashion house bearing his name. He had a multifaceted personality that complemented his collections. After a first launch in 1937, they became successful with an international clientele only after World War II due to a strongly forward-looking style that was able anticipate future trends. He held the stage until his untimely death from leukemia at the young age of 42. As with other famous designers, for Fath fashion would provide a safe and multifaceted refuge after a youth rich with varied experiences. He was born into a family of artists: his great-grandparents, in the mid 1800s, were novelists and fashion illustrators, and his grandfather was a landscape painter. At the age of 22 he worked in a publishing house, and in the evening took courses on drawing, cutting, and dancing. He was very aware of his physical beauty and of his taste for theatricality. He would exploit them as a method of advertising in order to promote his talent and the maison which, by the early 1950s, had a staff of 600 people and was an important part of the panorama of French haute couture. Fath’s characteristic rapidity in creation, and his speed in surpassing, with the spur of his imagination, what he had already achieved with other lines, did not allow him to be considered, as he should have been, the inventor, before 1940, of what would later in 1947 be defined with Dior as the New Look. But Dior would have the intuition, very useful to the industrialist Boussac, to use, after the shortages of war and the Nazi occupation, yards and yards of cloth, almost in a return to a femininity once again forced into corsets. Nevertheless, Fath distinguished himself for the asymmetry of the different parts of a dress, the return to a figure sometimes caressed by extended and sinuous shapes but more often accentuated by them, with a wasp waist, a very large skirt, pronounced hips, and an ample bust softened by deep necklines. But his style also expressed itself with touches of imagination, accents of color which loved to clash with a line that was always clear and structured. He was the one who dared to combine very luminous colors such as lemon yellow and orange, to furnish very feminine dresses with details stolen from the male wardrobe, so that his preference for short hair went together with his thrilling collection of stockings decorated with lace. After his death, although his wife Geneviève took over the maison it nevertheless stopped presenting its collections in the spring of 1957, despite the fact that the family would maintain majority ownership of the various operating companies almost until the 1980s. Since 1992, the maison Fath has presented two prêt-à-porter collections a year by the Dutch designer Tom Van Lingen. In 1997 the maison was acquired by Group Emmanuelle Khanh, led by Franµois Barthes.
The reorganization of the maison, which had been “silent” since 1998, starts with the arrival of a young English designer, Lizzy Disney, who is appointed artistic director.
Together with Emmanuelle Khanh and Harel, Fath is part of the new France Luxury Group (President Franµois Barthes, CEO Mounir Moufarrige).
Céline Toledano is named executive director of Jacques Fath. She had worked for 10 years, up until 1993, as director of prêt-à-porter for Karl Lagerfeld. In the years that followed, the same position was held by Martine Sitbon and then by Céline. Now, at the age of 39, she participates in the relaunch and reorganization of the Fath.
The house presents its Spring-Summer 2003 collection, designed by Lizzy Disney, at Fashion Week in Paris.
Lizzy Disney leaves Fath. The management of the France Luxury Group has changed. The new person in charge is Alain Dumenil (owner of Francesco Smalto and Stéphane Kélian). Mounir Moufarrige also leaves, as does Ritu Beri, who becomes the new designer at Scherrer.