Paul Poiret and Art Deco

The main purpose of this article is to evaluate two important aspects of the personality of the French fashion designer Paul Poiret (1875-1944). We will firstly study his conception of designers as artist/creators and we will then go on to focus on his important role in the establishment of Art Deco. In order to achieve these aims, we will look at two important cultural contexts: the Post-Romantic -its social and theoretic distinction of fashion- and the Parisian Avant-Garde -its extraordinary conceptual revelation in the relationships between art and craftmanship. In these two areas, we will find the key to explaining this new dimension of fashion and Paul Poiret's contribution to it.