The set of Alexandre Vauthier’s haute couture show

New York City loves to push out new talent, often with help from organizations like the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). Conversely, Paris is not launching a lot of new names these days. LVMH and PPR are not in a recruiting mood. Instead, they prefer to focus on values that are already proven, saving a penny here and there and optimizing existing brands. But 2009 saw the entrance of a new name in the game for Paris: Alexandre Vauthier. He did two impeccable haute couture shows in January and July and is the current “talk of the town.”

Here are ten things you should know about French fashion’s new star: Alexandre Vauthier.

1. Despite his haute couture label (named Alexandre Vauthier), Vauthier’s prices are down from 4,000 to 6,000 euros ($6,000–$9,000) during the first season to around 1,500 euros ($2,200) now for dresses without embroidery (keep in mind that this is compared with couture prices). The posh Bon Marché superstore in Paris will sell a dress in mid-November with removable shoulder pads priced at 600 euros ($900). “I did them myself with a friend during three weeks in a seaside holiday house near Pyla last summer,” says Vauthier. “The label will read ‘Handmade in France.’”

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

2. Vauthier can’t wait for the second TRON movie. He is obsessed with a “flawless garment” and a “radical cut.” He describes his jackets as “boxes” because of the crazy engineering: “It’s not about futurism but precision and efficiency.” He therefore hates the “45-miles-of-fabric nightgowns.”

3. Vauthier likes inventing fabrics like foam glued with jersey, where the jersey itself becomes “something straight and laser-cut.” His latest shoulder pads were cut by some anonymous aerospace-industry engineer who tried the foam used for speedboat seats and weapon suitcases. He sells a dress made of silicon and plaster that is embroidered with real compressed milk drops (he found a stock from the 1940s in a Parisian flea market).

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

4. Cool girls like him. “Madonna just borrowed one dress last week and had one special dress custom-made for her, but this means nothing; there’s a lot of competition in the Madonna area, right?” Róisín Murphy wears Alexandre Vauthier and modeled for his first-ever couture show in January 2009 in Paris. French actress Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds) wore him for the Basterds premiere in New York. As he states, “I don’t want to dress Lady Gaga. I don’t know why, she flips me out. I like how far she pushes the envelope, but I like it pure and I’m suspicious of overload.”

5. The Alexandre Vauthier label is run by a very small team, but he’s supported by PR (Station Service) and the patronage of craft kings like Lesage, Louboutin, Swarovski, Saga, and “this old grandpa who used to do belts for Yves Saint Laurent and Ungaro.” Vauthier does the drawing, draping, accounting, delivering, and fabric buying, yet despite his talent, money is running short, and the quest for an investor is on. Concerning finances he says, “I have this pure optimism about it. I already have one year behind me, and business could be profitable in two years’ time.”

6. Vauthier decided to launch his label when his boss at the time, Thierry Mugler, told him: “But do something on your own, dammit!”

Alexandre Vauthier and Róisín Murphy

7. How did he get that job with Thierry Mugler? In 1995, the 22-year-old Vauthier virtually called and stalked “everybody in the seven-story Thierry Mugler building to get a job. On my first day there, everybody already knew me. The first show I worked on was the 20th-anniversary one. I lost 14 pounds. This is when I became neurotic about perfection. If one thread was off, we’d get the dress thrown in our face,” he recalls, beaming with pride. Later, he went on to work on Jean Paul Gaultier’s haute couture and fur lines. “At Jean Paul Gaultier I learned to find solutions in 15 minutes to avoid any dramas. The good thing is he always says thank you.”

8. Vauthier is from a French provincial upbringing, with the usual absent-father, surrounded-by-women mythology: His grandmother wore YSL and treasured her Chanel jacket, and his mother wore fox and YSL’s Opium perfume. On his dear mom: “My mother would get me out of school to do shopping; she’s the one who made me become nuts.” He also has a sister who listened to David Bowie. “My first fashion image was Nina Hagen walking on flames in her ‘African Reggae’ video. I was eight years old.”

9. His last collection, shown off the Parisian haute couture calendar, was inspired by “the Los Angeles of David Lynch, the femme fatale, the crack behind the Hollywood seduction, and Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, as impeccable as she is unhappy.”

10. For now, Vauthier is sticking to monochrome: “Developing prints is too expensive. Just the color tryouts are not affordable for me. But this is not my last word.”

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

Look designed by Alexandre Vauthier

PHOTO CREDIT: Dominique Maitre, alexandrevauthier.com