A big name in fashion has passed away. French designer Italian origin Emanuel Ungaro died in Paris at the age of 86. He had studied with Balenciaga before opening his own fashion house in Paris in 1965, defining himself as "a sensual obsessed" with a colorful style.

"You don't have to wear a dress, you have to live in it," said the man, who considered his work a craft and left the fashion world in 2004.

At Ungaro, "sensuality is everywhere", writes her friend the writer Christine Orban in a short biography which she devoted to her. "A simple sweater, by the softness of its material, calls for a caress; a dress is cut to move, accompany the body in its movements, show and hide: because he loves women, Emanuel knows the limits of male tolerance , it will create a garment too good to be torn off, but clever enough to suggest to take it off with tenderness. "

From Aix-en-Provence to Paris

The second of an Italian immigrant family of six children, Emanuel Ungaro, born February 13, 1933, could have been content to follow in the footsteps of his father, a tailor in Aix-en-Provence. The young man, bursting with energy, learned sewing with him but quickly left his hometown for Paris.

He arrived in the capital in 1956, barely 23 years old. It was there that he met the only master he recognized: the Spanish couturier Cristobal Balenciaga who practices sewing as an ethic, builds his clothes with the demands of an architect in search of ever more refined lines.

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Emanuel Ungaro will later say that he learned the essentials from his father and from Balenciaga.

He worked six years for the Spanish couturier, spent a year at Courrèges and launched out: in 1965, assisted by a few workers, he opened his own house on avenue Mac-Mahon, in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris.

Workaholic, he fiercely creates, superimposing the materials, sometimes disjointed prints, draping the silk in bright colors directly on the mannequins. Its mix of flowers and polka dots, stripes and tiles, often bright colors open new horizons for haute couture.

The first, Emanuel Ungaro, puts on a long tunic dress, then a chasuble dress, then a jacket-coat, without weighing down the silhouette. Because the materials are fluid and the dress must be only a show of the body of a woman free to move.

Empire builder

Her style seduces elegant wealthy women and actresses like her friend Anouk Aimée. He also dresses actresses on screen, notably Gena Rowlands, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani.

In 1968, alongside haute couture, Emanuel Ungaro launched into ready-to-wear, with a line for women, followed a few years later by a line for men.

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He had received the Golden Dice for the best haute couture house in 1980.

Over the years, he built an empire, interested in perfumes, shoes, glasses ... before his house was bought in 1996 by the Ferragamo family.

From 2001, Emanuel Ungaro, married and father of a daughter, began to distance himself from fashion, leaving to his main collaborator, Giambattista Valli, the artistic direction of ready-to-wear and accessories.

Even if he himself continued to create collections for a few more years, he retired from the world of haute couture in 2004, believing that it no longer corresponds "to the expectations of women today".

With AFP

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