Claude Montana, fashion designer whose look defined the ’80s, dies at 76

Claude Montana, the bold, haunted French designer whose exquisite tailoring defined the big-shouldered power look of the 1980s – a tough, erotic, androgynous chic that brought him fame and accolades until he was brought down by drugs and tragedy in the 90s – died. Friday in France. He was 76 years old.

The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode confirmed the death but did not specify the cause or specify the location of death.

Mr. Montana was part of a cohort of avant-garde Parisian designers, including Thierry Mugler and later Jean Paul Gaultier, who idealized the female form in extravagant, stylized ways that recalled the screen sirens of old Hollywood, but reconstituted in external forms. space. Mr. Mugler, who died in 2022, offered a campier femme fatale vision than Mr. Montana’s icy vision, although the two were often lumped together as the architects of the 1980s “glamazon.”

His clothes, said Valerie Steele, director of the Fashion Institute of Technology museum, “were fierce, with a power that was both militaristic and highly eroticized.” She added: “It wasn’t the powerful American look of an executive with shoulder pads. “She was a different type of working woman.”

Mr. Montana often drew inspiration from the nightlife of Parisian demi-monde — the sex workers and dominatrixes, the denizens of the leather bars he frequented. But he wasn’t just eliminating fetish gear.

“His cut was impeccable,” fashion journalist and author Kate Betts said by phone. “The level of perfectionism was intense.”

Josh Patner, former fashion coordinator at Bergdorf Goodman, said in an interview: “Her clothes were beautiful, meticulous objects. He defined the design language of his time. The powerful proportions of the 1980s, the unreasonably elegant surfaces, the hard edges made sensual.

Shy and recessive in person, Mr. Montana was nevertheless a born showman. Since his first show in 1977, when he featured models dressed in all-leather regalia, the epaulettes of their jackets buckled with chains (which drew comparisons to Nazi uniforms – upsetting the designer, whose inspiration was closer to home), his Parisian presentations were among the liveliest, always monitored by guards in white paper suits and shrouded in secrecy. “You waited and waited,” Ms. Betts said, “but it was always worth it.”

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Ellin Saltzman, former fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, said: “There were people crying after Claude’s shows.” She added: “Almost Germanic in their tempo, they could be very militant but totally sexy at the same time. »

Claude Montamat was born on June 29, 1947 in Paris, one of three siblings. He changed his last name in the 1970s because, he said, people kept pronouncing it wrong. His mother was German; his father, a fabric manufacturer, was Spanish. The family was well off.

“Very bourgeois,” he told the Washington Post in 1985. “They wanted me to be something I didn’t want to be. »

He left home at the age of 17 and moved to London, where he began making papier-mâché jewelry that appeared on the cover of British Vogue. But back in Paris, where he returned in 1973, he did not find a market for his pieces and, thanks to a friend, landed a job as a tailor at Mac Douglas, a luxury leather goods company. A year later, he became the company’s chief designer. In 1977, he was alone.

By the end of the decade, he was a star and his styles would dominate the ’80s. Critics called him the future of Paris fashion. He had licensing deals, a boutique, a successful perfume, and ready-to-wear lines for men and women; I designed for an Italian line, Complice. ’80s cynosures like Cher, Diana Ross, and Grace Jones all wore Montana. Don Johnson and Bruce Willis too.

“He was a great designer,” Ms. Steele said, “but he had demons.”

Trapped by drugs, he would often disappear for days or weeks. In 1989, when Dior called, he turned down the job. “I need space” he told the Washington Post This year. “I don’t want to have all this money and go to an asylum.”

However, a year later, I accepted Lanvin’s offer to design its haute couture line, for five seasons. “His new space girls are of a gentler breed, wearing soft silk clothes with small waists and full skirts,” Bernadine Morris wrote in a Times review. “Her collection was a perfect appearance expressing the latest new era of couture.”

But many critics criticized the new work — Mr. Montana’s asymmetrical sheaths and beaded tops were perhaps too minimal for the ladies of couture — and he was fired.

Wallis Franken was an American model with two children who was Mr. Montana’s muse and runway star since his debut. They shared a common taste for nightlife and cocaine and, she said, Ms. Franken was always deeply in love with him. Their marriage in 1993, however, was seen by some as manipulation on his part to revive his business, a cynical “white marriage”.

In any case, their relationship, As Maureen Orth reported in Vanity Fair in 1996, it was stormy. She didn’t like her relationships with men, and he didn’t like his work; he beat her once, Ms. Orth wrote, when photographer Steven Meisel asked her to pose for a Donna Karan campaign.

Three years after their marriage, Ms. Franken’s body was found in the street outside their Paris apartment. Tortured by her own drug use and discouraged by her marriage, Ms. Franken had told friends that she had considered suicide. But people whispered: had she been pushed?

“Whatever I suffer, I suffer because I suffer,” Mr. Montana told the Washington Post. “I often wonder why I have to endure this pain.”

Mr. Montana continued to publish collections until the turn of the millennium, and critics invariably described them in lackluster terms. By the 2000s, he had become a recluse, even as young designers looked to his bold styles for inspiration.

“There was a feeling that Claude would go on and last forever,” Dawn Mello, former fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, told Vanity Fair in 2013. “Then he disappeared and fell off the map.”

Designer Lawrence Steele, speaking from Milan, recalled that one of the first fashion pieces he bought was a long navy cashmere Claude Montana coat, with shoulder pads “over here”, as he said.

“It was 1983 and I had a buzz cut, so I looked like Grace Jones and felt extremely fabulous,” Mr Steele said. “His clothes made you look larger than life. They were like pure ego and strength. And that’s what the 80s are all about: this pure and powerful pride of being.

Vanessa Friedmann reports contributed.