Emanuel Ungaro

Every Italian knows that in the life of a man the most important thinks are the work and the home. Emanuel Ungaro honestly claims that via his work he creates for all the women in the world, and wit the home – only for his one and only woman Laura.

The sensitive, seducing and all along with that intellectual style of Ungaro can always be noticed and felt. Same goes for melting the cultures of two countries – France and Italy. The love towards the music and the art of painting fills the masterpieces of the creator with movement and rhythm, reminding of the breathing of the very life.

Emanuel Ungaro is born in south France /Eke-an-Province/ in 1933 in the many-child family of poor Italian emigrant. His father left his country during the autocrat regime o Mussolini. However, his parents always cherished the culture of their nation, the customs and the live song.   In such a way they have brought up their children in love towards the music of the great composers.

„My daddy – remembers Ungaro – jealously was watching and wanting us to speak in Italian, to eat spaghetti and after eating to sing Italian opera arias.

Province, that is the native place of many great French painters, has surely influenced the development and forming of the taste and mental and spiritual addictions of the future designer. Eventually over time, the music and the art of painting feels in his life and inspire his art and creativity. After restoring his middle-ages period home in Province years ago, Emanuel Ungaro invites local masters and unites the mighty power of the Italian and French cultures.

The love towards the needle Ungaro inherits from his father, who put his little son behind the sewing machine when he was still at the age of 7. The kid, however, did not walk away from the machine and was constantly watching his mother – Lady Ungaro, who used to sew clothes for many rich people in Province.

During his whole life, the designer calls his work an art. In the world of the designs and patterns Emanuel finds out a rest for his own soul, in which the romantic optimist is always arguing with the realist. These are the two fighting principles – the basis of his art. Not knowing at all that the fate has decided to write down his name in the notebook of her favorites, Ungaro chooses Paris as the ideal place to study his future profession. In 1956 she is admitted as an assistant in the house of Cristobel Balensiaga, under whose proficient supervision he learns the tricks and knacks of the craft in continuation of 6 years. For him and his friends Balensiaga is unshakable authority. To be a good designer – architect or sculptor in the work with the shapes, painter in the usage of the colors, musician, understanding the harmony and philosopher, knowing what a miracle life is – this is what Ungaro learns from Balensiaga. In the laboratories for Haute Couture Ungaro finds out how to distinguish the plain from the exquisite. Sooner or later, however, every student gets the desire to prove himself and remind the world of his presence, to mark and emphasize his qualities and to start working alone.

After spending two more years in the House Courreges, despite fact that he is fairly poor, Ungaro finally managed to open his own modest atelier, together with his friends Sonia Knap, who creates for him materials for long years. In the beginning he works only with 4 dressmakers, at the area if 40 square meters. In1965 the trim saloon on avenue Mak-Maon is barely capable of gather all the ones willing to see the first collection of Emanuel Ungaro. Next is a complete triumph. Glorious actresses such as Kathryn Deniov and Isabel Adjani become regular clients of the master.  After two years later he moves to street “Monten” the famous street of Paris saloons for higher fashion/, the number of people buying clothes from his collections enlarges with the names of famous personas such as Jaclyn Kennedy and Ira de Furstenberg.   Ungaro gains an international fame. Today the house of Emanuel occupies 3 floors of an antique building. 1968 is the year when Ungaro gets attracted and becomes a huge lover of the metallic luster. His models wear metal bras, and in august the same year he is already leading in the sales of metallic jewelries and decorations. The very same year he creates also his first prкt-a-porte collection.

“My style is formed early, since the very beginning – shares the designers in an interview. The intellect and the desire to seduce – this is the double-faced reality, the basis of my style.” In the next 30 years Ungaro opens scores of boutiques and signs license contracts all over the world. After the 70s his models become more mild and flexible. An important effect and a distinguishing mark of his style become the bright colors and the prints on the materials, the experiments with various tissues, as Emanuel pays attention to every detail that can highlight them. The designer of the bottle of his first perfume Diva is inspired exactly from one of his materials. The 70s bring along the long trousers in his collections, as well as the pastel leather jackets, the dresses with inbuilt stays, the elastic puckers of jackets, the elements of the modernistic interpretation of the shape of the kimono and the gentle fabrics.

In the 80s the designer accentuates on the shapes. He prefers dresses that impress with volume, but still does not forget to experiment with the whole scale of colors. The 90s add to the style the femininity of the forms. He starts using the print, imitating the animal skins, in combination with lace in many of his dresses. Other variations that he uses for his models in this period are the geometrical figures, combined with gentle embroidery. The master of the needle completely disregards the golden rule for the classical harmony in the higher fashion: he uses in one model not 3, but even 4 colors, mixes various fabrics with big floral motives, chequerred designs and stripes – and all this on a multicolor background.  Exactly due to his denial to follow the generally acquired fashion conventions Ungaro is often receiving the not so favorable critics of the fashion experts. The game of colors and brightness are the result of combining two cultures in the conscious of the painter. His pulsing, dancing and passionate art brings joy in the everyday life. His works are always easily recognizable as they are very specific – by the slight silk elements, whose neighbors are the flowers, the checkered boxes and the dots; by the smoothness of the line and elegance of the form, embracing the woman’s body. “The design, structure and coloring – everything needs to be dependent on the free movement and convenience. This is my style”. Plus, the creation of his models is not preceded by an excise, but by a firsthand work with fabrics on the body of the model.

Emanuel Ungaro is an owner of many prizes, awarded to him in France, USA, Japan, Mexico. Amongst them are also 2 golden thimbles. Numerous boutiques all round the world sell male and female collections of his fashion lines, conceptually derived one from another, perfume-cosmetics products (controlled by Chanel Parfums), various accessories and laundry. Unlike most of his colleagues, Ungaro combines in himself for long years the painter and the businessman and the last decisive word in his empire hasn’t had the retailer who determines what to be sewed by the designer in many other fashion houses.

The recent years, when everybody in the fashion business is captivated by the idea of rough minimalism, Emanuel Ungaro stubbornly continues to popularize and stick to the usage of the variety of colors. I will always stay a maxima-list, he likes repeating. My clothes oblige the woman to feel free. She can wear them, without thinking of any boundaries”.

At the age of 55, the sworn bachelor Ungaro meets, as he himself says, “the only blonde in his life” – Laura. Only a month passes by and the designer is ready for marriage. At that time Emanuel and Laura are amongst the most beautiful pairs of Paris. An year after getting married the husbands get a daughter – the little beauty Kozima. They live in a small house near his native town. He continues working very actively and creates collections till the spring of 2002. After that this role is delegated to the young designer Djanbatista Vali, who works for the company since 1997. In recent interviews the withdrawn from the spotlights 71-years old master accentuates that he does not intend to withdraw entirely from the fashion worlds and he is full of energy and ideas.

In 1996 the financial control of the company is handed over to the Italian company Ferragamo. Released from the role of administrator and businessman at the same time, Ungaro devotes himself entirely to his art, which style stays the same and as always, supportive to the glory and fiesta of life. Currently the company is managed by GFT apparel Corp. with headquarters in New York. In the fashion world Emanuel Ungaro is a synonym of independence. “For what I am doing I am responsible only in front of god, myself and my partners. Maybe also in front of my family too”. He always creates against the drift, not using its float and energy, on the contrary to the opinions of his other colleagues. Probably this is why he creates in such a specific way, a way that is not mastered by just anybody. Today fashion house Ungaro is amongst the leading brands in the fashion world, Ungaro himself is between the most famous and respected designers in he world.

Text beneath a photograph:

Favorite quotes of Emanuel Ungaro

 “I think in French, but I laugh in Italian”.

„the research show only what women have loved in the past – explains Ungaro. – I imprint myself in the future. I don’t even remember my last collection”.

„if you have been stroked by the beauty of a woman, but you can’t remember how she has been dressed, then she has been dressed perfectly”.