On the occasion of the Goût de M Festival, on March 23 and 24, our stylist Laëtitia Leporcq will organize a shooting. Information and ticketing on Legoutdemfestival.lemonde.fr
Evoking outdoor activities and seaside vacations, stripes thrive in this spring-summer collections in all their forms. XXL or ultra-thin, horizontal, vertical or diagonal, total look or not… However, it has not always been the favorite pattern of designers and has even suffered from a bad reputation for a long time.
In Occident, “the medieval stripe was a cause of disorder and transgression”, actually notes Michel Pastoureau in the introduction to Stripes, a cultural history (Threshold, 2021). ” In L‘image as in the street are thus frequently indicated by a piece of clothing or a striped attribute all those who place themselves outside the‘social order, either because of‘a conviction, either due to‘an infirmity, either because‘they carry out an inferior activity or an infamous profession, either because‘they are not or no longer Christians”, recalls the medievalist. Perjurers, madmen, valets, prostitutes, heretics… “All these individuals transgress the‘social order, as the scratch transgresses the‘chromatic, visual and sartorial order”, continues the historian.
It is therefore not surprising that stripes were also worn by knights, then soldiers, to find themselves (or recognize their adversaries) on a battlefield, or even underworld figures and other criminals in the cinema. We remember Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in The Godfather (1972), Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in Wall Street (1987), Fernand Naudin (Lino Ventura) in The Gunslingers (1963), or even Alexandre Stavisky (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in Stavisky (1974).
And when the stripe loses its pejorative or discriminatory dimension over time, it nevertheless retains its function as a tool of social distinction. In the United States, Ivy League students use the colors and width of the stripes of their ties to distinguish themselves from each other. Stripes have always been at home on sports fields and racetracks, where striped jerseys and jackets have long flourished. It is, in this context, “all at the same time signage, emblematic, fun and hygienic”, specifies Michel Pastoureau.
So it was only a matter of time before the stripe also became the sign of recognition of the fashion tribes. Multicolored on a black background for Sonia Rykiel – “Beauty will always be scratched”, the French designer once declared – narrow and just as colorful at the Englishman Paul Smith, it borrows from the sailor wardrobe at Jean Paul Gaultier, who continued to develop it throughout his career.
