Claude Montana, the bold and haunting French designer whose exquisite couture defined the edgy look of the 1980s – an erotic and androgynous hard chic that brought him fame and accolades until drugs and tragedy felled him in the 90s – died Friday in France. It was 76.
The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode confirmed the death, but did not specify the cause or where she died.
Mr. Montana was among a cohort of avant-garde Parisian designers, among them Thierry Mugler and later Jean Paul Gaultier, who idealized the female form in extravagant, stylized ways that harkened back to the screen sirens of old Hollywood, but as reconstituted in outer space. Mr. Mugler, who died in 2022, offered a more femme fatale than Mr. Montana’s icy vision, though the two were often lumped together as the architects of 1980s “glamazon.”
His clothes, said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, “were fierce, with a power that was both militaristic and very erotic.” He added: “It wasn’t the American dashing executive look with the shoulders. She was a different working woman.”
Mr. Montana often drew inspiration from the after-hours demi-monde world of Paris – the sex workers and dominators, the denizens of the leather bars he frequented. But he wasn’t just putting out fetish gear.
“His tailoring was razor sharp,” fashion journalist and author Kate Betts said by phone. “The level of perfectionism was intense.”
Josh Patner, former fashion coordinator at Bergdorf Goodman, said in an interview: “His clothes were neat, beautiful objects. He defined the design language of his time. The power proportions of the 1980s, the unapologetically elegant surfaces, the hard edges became sensual.’
Shy and reserved in person, Mr. Montana was nevertheless a born showman. Since his first show in 1977, when he sent out models in full leather regalia, their jacket epaulettes wrapped in chains (which drew comparisons to Nazi uniforms – upsetting the designer, whose inspiration was closer to home), the his presentations in Paris were among the most boisterous, always supervised by doormen in white paper uniforms and shrouded in secrecy. “You waited and waited,” said Ms. Betts, “but it was always worth it.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Ellin Saltzman, former fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, said: “There were people who cried after Claude’s shows.” He added, “Almost Germanic in rhythm, they could be very combative but totally sexy at the same time.”
Claude Montamat was born on June 29, 1947 in Paris, one of three brothers. He changed his last name in the 1970s because, he said, people kept mispronouncing it. His mother was German. His father, a textile manufacturer, was Spanish. The family was well off.
“Very bourgeois,” he told the Washington Post in 1985. “They wanted me to be something I didn’t want to be.”
She left home when she was 17 and moved to London, where she began making papier-mâché jewelry that appeared on the cover of British Vogue. But back home in Paris, where he returned in 1973, he couldn’t find a market for his pieces and, through a friend, got a job as a cutter at Mac Douglas, a luxury leather company. A year later, he was the company’s chief designer. By 1977, he was on his own.
By the end of the decade he was a star and his style would dominate the 80s. Critics called him the future of fashion in Paris. It had licensing deals, a boutique, a best-selling fragrance and men’s and women’s ready-to-wear lines. designed for an Italian line, Complice. Eighties hounds such as Cher, Diana Ross and Grace Jones all wore Montana. So did Don Johnson and Bruce Willis.
“He was a great, great designer,” Ms. Steele said, “but he had demons.”
Trapped in drugs, he would often disappear for days or weeks at a time. In 1989, when Dior came calling, he turned down the job. “I need space,” he told the Washington Post that year. “I don’t want to have all this money and go to an asylum.”
However, a year later she accepted Lanvin’s offer to design its haute couture line, and did so for five seasons. “His new girls in space are a gentler breed, wearing soft silk dresses with small waists and flared skirts,” wrote Bernadine Morris in a review for The Times. “His collection was a perfect cameo expressing the latest new era of couture.”
But many critics took one look at the new project—Mr. Montana’s asymmetrical sheaths and beaded tops might have been too minimal for the couture ladies—and let him go.
Wallis Franken was an American model with two children who was Mr. Montana’s muse and star since he started. They shared a taste for nightlife and cocaine, and by her account, Ms. Franken was always deeply in love with him. Their marriage in 1993 was seen by some, however, as a manipulation on his part to revive his business, a cynical ‘mariage blanc’.
In any case, their relationship, as Maureen Orth reported in Vanity Fair in 1996, was stormy. She resented his affairs with men, and he resented her work. she was once struck, Ms. Orth wrote, when the photographer Steven Meisel asked her to pose for a Donna Karan campaign.
Three years after their wedding, Mrs. Franken’s body was found in the street outside their Paris apartment. Tormented by drug use and disillusioned with her marriage, Ms. Franken had told friends she had considered suicide. But people whispered: Had she been pushed?
“What I suffer, I do because I am,” Mr. Montana told the Washington Post. “I often wonder why I have to go through this pain.”
Mr. Montana continued to put out collections until the turn of the millennium, and critics always described them in vague terms. By the 2000s he had become a recluse, even as younger designers turned to his bold styles for inspiration.
“There was a sense that Claude was going to go on and on forever,” Dawn Mello, Bergdorf Goodman’s former fashion director, told Vanity Fair in 2013. “Then he disappeared and fell off the map.”
Designer Lawrence Steele, speaking from Milan, recalled that one of the first fashion pieces he bought was a navy blue floor-length Claude Montana cashmere coat with “out to here” shoulder pads, as he put it.
“It was 1983 and I had a buzz cut so I looked like Grace Jones and I felt super gorgeous,” Mr Steele said. “His clothes gave you a bigger personality. It was like pure ego and power. And that’s what the 80s were in general: this pure, powerful pride of being.”
Vanessa Friedman contributed to the report.
