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Paul Poiret x Georges Lepape: The Golden Age of Parisian Elegance Returns

Paul Poiret x Georges Lepape: The Golden Age of Parisian Elegance Returns October 6, 2025Art Auction, ParisOff

The Art of Fashion Immortalized: Paul Poiret and Georges Lepape at Christie’s

In the golden age of Parisian couture, when fashion and art were indistinguishable from poetry and rebellion, two visionaries dared to redefine elegance: Paul Poiret and Georges Lepape. Now, over a century later, Christie’s celebrates their creative alliance in its Exceptional Sale, unveiling a piece that feels less like an artifact and more like a love letter to beauty itself.

It was 1911 when Poiret — the revolutionary who freed women from corsets and dressed them instead in color, drapery, and fantasy — met Lepape, a young illustrator with a taste for dreamscapes. Together, they created “Les Choses de Paul Poiret vues par Georges Lepape,” an illustrated album that would forever alter the visual language of fashion. It was not simply a catalog of garments; it was a manifesto — a declaration that fashion could be art, that elegance could be modern, and that imagination could clothe a generation.

At Christie’s, this original work returns as an echo of that dazzling moment when the 20th century was learning to see beauty anew. Bound in silk and shimmer, every page is an encounter between fabric and fantasy — women rendered not as wearers but as muses, moving in a world painted with wit, mystery, and Orientalist charm.

Lepape’s fluid lines and bold colors captured the theatricality of Poiret’s designs: turbans and tunics, Persian inspirations, silhouettes that defied the rigid Edwardian codes. His women seemed to float — poised yet untouchable — and his hand gave form to Poiret’s revolution. What they produced together wasn’t merely fashion illustration; it was modernism in motion.

Paul Poiret, Embroidered stole adorned with ribbon flower motifs and trimmed with mink, circa 1912 (€30,000–40,000);

Set of 13 original gouache illustrations, signed, created for issue no. 1 of Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui (€40,000–50,000);

Modes et Manières d’Aujourd’hui, 1912, copy no. 2 on Japanese paper, bound for Pierre and Nicole Corrard by André Mare (€8,000–12,000).

The World and Fashion According to Paul Poiret

A rare testament to the universe of one of the pioneers of Art Deco.

The Exceptional Sale — auction in Paris on November 18

The Dream of a Modern Eden

At the dawn of haute couture as we know it, Poiret stood like a prophet. He was the first designer to envision fashion as total art — where garments, perfume, décor, and presentation fused into a single sensory universe. Lepape, with his rare sensitivity and wit, translated that vision into images of enchantment. Their work inspired generations to come — from the Art Deco masters to today’s designers who continue to seek that elusive alchemy between craftsmanship and imagination.

To see this piece now, within the refined halls of Christie’s Exceptional Sale, is to feel time folding in on itself. It is Paris before the wars, a perfume of velvet and rebellion, a memory of how beauty once led the avant-garde.

A Legacy Reimagined

Paul Poiret’s story is one of audacity and artistry — a designer who saw women as emblems of freedom and creativity. Georges Lepape, his artistic twin, elevated the ephemeral to the eternal. Together, they composed a visual symphony that bridged couture and fine art, leaving behind not just garments or drawings, but a philosophy: that elegance begins where conformity ends.

As this rare work takes its place at auction, it becomes more than an object — it becomes a mirror to an age when style was destiny, and creation was an act of pure courage.

Because some dreams, it seems, never fade — they are simply waiting, quietly, for the right hands to rediscover them.

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