You’ll learn about the inspirational careers and most iconic designs of classic couturiers like Pierre Balmain, and also discover newer couturiers like Simon Porte Jacquemus and Olivier Rousteing, who are currently reinventing French culture. To continue celebrating Pride Month, we’ve put together a list of the most famous gay couturiers. While it’s true that haute couture in France traces its origins to two heterosexual designers ( Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Poiret ), since around WWII, gay designers have dominated the industry. As this French Slate article explains, gay men have excelled in the art of dressmaking since the early 20th century. In fact, you’d probably be hard-pressed to name a French fashion designer who isn’t gay (apart from Coco Chanel!). Note: “McInturff, Steve Book, Delaware O.When you think of French fashion designers, whose name springs to mind first? Christian Dior? Yves Saint Laurent? Most of France’s most celebrated couturiers are gay men. Photo strip, undated, 35 x 27 mm, provenance: US, (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, 1951, 121 x 83 mm, note: “1951” “Davis & J.C.” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, Undated, 96 x 67 mm (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Cabinet card, circa 1880, 167 x 109 mm, provenance: US, The book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s (5 Continents Editions), is available online. When we see them as connected, we feel more whole, and that’s what love is about for many of us anyway. Seeing ourselves in the past is as much about being certain of our present and, dare I say, our future. What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together? Flipping through the book, it wasn’t that I felt that I learned a great deal about being LGBTQ, but what gave me comfort was the feeling that we’re not going anywhere. While the majority of the images hail from the United States and are of predominantly white men, there are images from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United Kingdom among the cache. The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2,800 photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades.
In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images tell the story of love and affection between men, with some clearly in love and others hinting at more than just friendship. Hunter” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions)Ī beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new book that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been like for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms. Postcard, circa 1910, 90 x 141 mm, note on front: “E.