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Rosensthiel was already in the fashion and publicity business. Lacroix studied at the Louvre and the Sorbonne with the idea of becoming a museum curator. The young pair prowled museums, went to the opera and bucketed around Europe student style. "Christian was curious about the Mediterranean, so we traveled to Greece and Spain and Venice in a real vacation spirit," says Rosensthiel. "He used to keep little travel notebooks, full of notes and sketches."
Those little sketches were not lost on Rosensthiel: "I thought his drawings terrific. When I saw his talent, I felt it was silly for him to limit himself to being a curator when there were other people who could only do that." Lacroix was finding his scholarly exertions "heavy," so when Rosensthiel whistled up a few introductions, he was on his way. Through her he met Picart, who helped him get a job with Hermes and later with Patou.
If the fashion story of Lacroix at Patou is one of triumph, the human one contains some sorrow. Jean de Mouy, then 29, had just taken over his family's perfume business when he hired the untried young designer. De Mouy's long shot triumphed, and the House of Patou was restored to its glory days of the '30s. But Picart and Lacroix made demands. They wanted to embark on ready-to-wear as soon as possible. Says Lacroix: "I was creating designs, but people couldn't afford them. I started suffering." About his chimerical designer, De Mouy is philosophical: "I still wish him well. I felt he was much more made for costumes and couture than ready-to-wear. I wanted to consolidate Patou's position in the field in which he was strongest before tackling ready-to- wear."
Today the House of Lacroix is filling in a solid commercial outline. Picart takes care of it, keeping his creative partner free to pursue his fantasies. After launching the ready-to-wear, Lacroix plans a menswear line in 1990. It is a lucrative market, but Lacroix insists that he is going into it because he himself can never find anything to wear, except perhaps in the U.S., where he goes to Ralph Lauren, Paul Stuart and Brooks Bros. In his reed-thin youth he wore -- guess what? -- his grandfather's suits. "They were well tailored, with beautiful shapes, materials and colors. But then ((sheepish smile)) I grew fatter."
The theater is never far from Lacroix's mind, so when he was approached by A.B.T. Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had seen his work, he welcomed a collaboration. In presenting Gaite Parisienne, a fizzy romp set to Manuel Rosenthal's brilliant editing of Offenbach, Baryshnikov knew what he did not want. "I was certain that I didn't want the heavy Maxim's look with the black stockings for the cancan girls. I wanted something light and funny and young." Both men wanted to create their own vision of fin-de-siecle Paris.
When the costumes arrived, Baryshnikov confesses to a moment of panic. There were the spotted stockings, the Glove Seller's skirt with huge black gloves all over it, the primitive palette, the bales of flowers on hats, bodices, skirts. "What have I done?" he asked himself, yet he quickly decided that he had done just fine. "The shapes are so extravagant, but they are never cartoonish or boring," he says. "They say, 'Let's open up our temperaments and not be afraid of exaggeration.' "