Nicknamed “Madame Butterfly”, she was the first Asian designer to integrate Parisian haute couture. She had dressed personalities from all over the world, from Grace Kelly to Hillary Clinton.
Le Monde with AFP
Great Japanese fashion lady Hanae Mori died Thursday, August 11 at her home in Tokyo at the age of 96, reported, Thursday, August 18, the Kyodo news agency. She was the first Asian designer to enter the seraglio of Parisian haute couture, with a style intertwining with refinement orient and West.
Nicknamed “Madame Butterfly” because of her favorite motif, the butterfly, she dressed personalities from around the world, from Grace Kelly to Hillary Clinton via Masako, who became Empress of Japan in 2019.
As a rare owner of a large company in the archipelago, Hanae Mori was also a pioneer in the emancipation of women in her country.
The stylist underlined the need to transmit to the young generations “the importance of artisanal creation”, believing that “the capacities of the human being are disappearing in this era of computer science”. “When human beings work with their hands, their creative capacities are growing,” she said in 2006.
Born January 8, 1926 in a rural area in western Japan, she first studied literature at the Christian University of Tokyo women. But she then decides to orient herself towards fashion after her marriage to Ken Mori, framework in the textile industry.
The click with Coco Chanel
At 25, in the reborn post-war tokyo, she opens her first shop, in front of a cinema. A chance: when leaving a session, a Japanese director spots his original creations and offers him to make costumes for his next film.
Hanae Mori will subsequently make outfits for hundreds of films, including some of great directors like Yasujiro Ozu and Nagisa Oshima. Her business prosperous, but in the early 1960s, when the advent of television sounded the end of the golden age of cinema, she decides to see further.
Hanae Mori then travels to New York and Paris, looking for inspiration by exploring like a simple client the department stores and haute couture shops. In Paris, she goes to the Coco Chanel’s fitting room who, after having quickly studied her client from the “country of the rising sun”, suggests a set of a brilliant orange, to contrast with her black hair of Jais.
Perplexing it at the moment, this advice from Coco Chanel will then act as a revelation for Hanae Mori: “The whole Japanese concept of beauty is based on concealment. I suddenly understood that I had to change My approach and make clothes that help women stand out, “she said later.
taste for tradition
In 1965, she presented her first collection abroad, in New York, on the theme of the meeting between the East and the West. While grafting a western touch, the traditional aesthetic codes of Japan play a big role in its creations, with patterns inspired by those of Kimonos: cherry blossoms, birds and many butterflies, distant reminiscence of the lepidoptera that were dancing above fields of his childhood.
Having moved her workshop in Paris, she accesses the consecration by becoming, in 1977, a member of the very exclusive union chamber of Parisian haute couture, a first for an Asian designer.
Hanae Mori liked to highlight her “traditional” side compared to other Japanese stylists more avant-garde according to her, like Issey Miyake (died August 5, 2022 at 84), Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo.
Its activities have gradually extended to ready-to-wear and perfumery. But faced with growing financial difficulties, his commercial empire ended up being dismantled and sold in the early 2000s.
Hanae Mori held her last Parisian parade in 2004, at 78 years old. Boutiques in its name still exist in Japan and its perfumes are sold worldwide. During her career, she had also created uniforms, especially for the hostesses of the Japan Airlines, as well as costumes for theater and opera, including – inevitably – Madame Butterfly in 1985 at La Scala in Milan.