sleek magazine

It’s been a rough couple of years for the French fashion house Ungaro. Questionable decision-making has lead, in 2009, to appointing Lindsay Lohan as Artistic Advisor, a move that was perceived as a desperate market strategy and that had lead to the resignation of head designer Esteban Cortazar. The Spaniard Estrella Archs then took the reigns with Lohan, showing the now infamous Spring 2010 collection of nipple pasties and heart motifs. Now that the collection hit the stores, sales are meager. The latest Spring 2011 show in Paris – to which, it’s been reported, Miss Lohan was not invited – failed to prove the house still had something to say. And for the final kiss of death, Cathy Horyn declared the “Fall of the House of Ungaro” in a recent article in the New York Times’ T Magazine, and delved into the highly complex financial aspect of the house’s fall from grace.

But things have not always been so bleak for the French Couture House. Emanuel Ungaro, who started his career in Paris as an apprentice for Balenciaga, developed in the late 1970s what was to become his signature style: ultra-feminine silhouettes in fabrics that broke the golden rule of ‘never mix your patterns.’ Ungaro combined florals, plaids, and stripes in one garment, creating chaos and elegance with vibrant color combinations. The strategically draped and shirred body-conscious designs were sensuous and rich, seductive without being vulgar. The bold patterns combined with soft feminine silhouettes became the epitome of 1980s women’s fashions, representing the duality of women’s roles.

It was precisely this duality that caught director John Casavettes’ attention when he was preparing for the making of his 1980 film Gloria. Played by his wife, the one and only Gena Rowlands, Gloria’s character is a former showgirl and gangster moll who reluctantly finds herself protecting a little boy from the mob after his entire family is wiped out. And while a story about a woman out on a lam doesn’t suggest an extensive wardrobe, Gloria’s “tough coockie” character is made rounder and more fascinating in light of her knack for classy, lavish designer wear: a female “dirty harry” dodging the mob through the streets of New York, exclusively clad in the Ungaro boutique collection. (One of the fatal mistakes Sidney Lumet has made in his 1999 remake of the film was to dress his Gloria, played by Sharon Stone, in floosy faux-Versace dresses. The other mistake being casting Stone for the role).

In the Columbia Pictures press release from 1980, it’s stated that the collection seen in the film is “Ungaro à la Cassavetes: skirts have been shortened drastically and shoulders have been given additional padding.” Thirty years on, when the future of the French house is uncertain, watching the cinematic masterpiece seems like something out of a fashion history class. Sit back and relish in the glory days of Ungaro.