Jean-Claude Jitrois Biography

Jean-Claude Jitrois is a French fashion designer, writer, based in Paris. He is creative director of the fashion luxury house Jitrois, since 1983. Over the decades, he has collaborated on a variety of artist and art-related projects.

Early life

Jean Claude Jitrois was born Jean Claude Coste in Narbonne, south-west France in 1944.

His father, a pilot in the French Air Force, travelled from one air base to another, so the young Jean Claude spent much of his early years in the care of his grandmother in Aix- en-Provence. A highly observant only child, it was under her instruction that he was first exposed to the classical arts of opera and theatre that were to play a significant role in his early aesthetic and social education.

In 1962 at age 18, Jean Claude returned in France from Algeria (a former French colony) where he had been living with his parents, to begin studying psychology at the hpital de la Piti Salpetrire in Paris. He worked with some of the leading psychoanalysts of the 20th Century such as Jacques Lacan"?s seminaries in Paris, then collaborating on an analysis at the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich for two years. Jean Claude spent more than ten years in the realm of psychology, specializing in the development of psychomotricity - the close relationship between the psyche and the body - in children between 0 and 2 years. Throughout the 1970s, Jean Claude was then made Director of the psychomotricity rehabilitation department within the medical faculty at the University of Nice, where he worked with 500 students. During this time he wrote several books about psychomotricity such as Que sais-je? encyclopedic series published by the French University Press on psychomotricity (1972).

In 1975, Jean-Claude is appointed by Simone Veil, at the head of Institut Suprieur de Rducation Psychomotrice of Nice. In the mean time he will work on a book with Giselle Soubiran entitled Psychomotricit et relaxation psychosomatique, 3 then Corps et Graphie3.

En 1975, Jean Claude publiera trois autres livres, Les 50 mots-cls de la psychomotricit et La relaxation psychosyntonique

Two key moments in his early life were to collaborate to inspire Jean Claude Coste"?s second vocation as a couturier :

• The first was his affinity with leather, which came from his father. Jean Claude was forbidden to play with his father"?s aviator jacket, which was part of his professional uniform and heavily decorated with medals. Of course, this injunction only encouraged him to transgress it when his father was away. The reason of the leather jacket - with its both protective and flamboyant qualities.
• The second, decades later, came through applying Jacob Moreno"?s theory of therapeutic psychodrama to his own psychomotricity work with children with learning difficulties. His patients felt much more comfortable in their own skin when given a costume or uniform to wear, such as that of a fire-fighter or a policeman, which Jean Claude had made himself.

Jitrois tends to demonstrate that fashion and psychology are inextricably linked, and his study of psychomotricity, of the body and body language has always informed his design and manipulation of the material of leather. In 2001, Jean Claude Jitrois was decorated as a chevalier of the Lgion d'Honneur, later elevated to the rank of officier in 2012, for services to the fashion industry and the promotion of France abroad.

Brand timeline

By 1976, Jean Claude decided that he would apply his knowledge and understanding of the body to try out making clothes. He purchased a small commercial space in Nice on the rue Tonduti de l"?Escarne, opposite the famous shop of the artist Ben with whom he became friends. Another boutique soon followed in the town of Juan-les-Pins, near Antibes, and in St. Tropez. The codes and aesthetic vision of the brand that were to endure were deeply influenced by the contemporary artists of this period who gathered in Provence, known as the New School of Nice.

During the war and the occupation, the south of France had been the "?Free Zone"?, and had since remained a hotbed for artists. Jean Claude was going regularly at that time to both the Auberge de la Colombe d"?Or in Saint Paul de Vence where one could bump into the artists (Juan) Miro, Alexander Calder, Yves Klein or Cesar (Baldiccini).

It was first and foremost the work of Calder and of Klein that Jean Claude Jitrois endeavoured to adapt into his leather creations - the vibrant blues, reds and yellows. By the late "?70s, leather was still heavily associated with motorcycle toughs, punks and the armed forces. Jean Claude Jitrois started a fashion revolution when he elevated the oldest material worn by man to the status of couture, fit even for a princess. Indeed, the royal family of Monaco - Princess Caroline and later her sister Stphanie - were amongst Jean Claude earliest and most loyal clientele.

In 1978, Jean Claude met Gilbert Maria, and the beginning of an iconic fashion partnership was begun, with Jean Claude Jitrois in the role of artistic director. The first boutique and workshop was establishedon rue Faubourg Saint Honor in Paris in 1983. Soon, J3 outgrew the capacity of the Paris workshop and the company was relocated to Chteau de Lierville in the "?Valley of the Kings"?.

From 1984, Jean Claude and his original collaborators lived in the chateau, while the production and ateliers were located in the adjoining outbuildings.

In 1998, the 'Skin Jean' was launched, as a line of leather trousers made to look and feel like your favourite pair of jeans. In the same year the Minoray technique was created by contouring strips of leather on a base of silk organza around the contours of the body. Eternally popular with performance artists, the "?Minoray body"? has since become a Jitrois classic. Photographer Helmut Newton would immortalize the collection that year for the Jitrois 1998 calendar.

At the same time, Jitrois opened its second stand-alone boutique, on the prestigious Sloane Street in London. This proved to be an extremely shrewd move, and now the British market revivals that of Paris in both terms of international renown and revenue. Since then boutiques have opened in Courchevel and Luxembourg, Aspen and the first Chinese flagship in Beijing. On September 2014, Jitrois has opened a new flagship store in Hong Kong, and a new boutique on Madison Avenue in New York on April 2015.

In 2009, Jean Claude Jitrois once again pushed the boundaries of leather engineering to launch a line of 5 pocket leather stretch jeans which were machine washable and could even be ironed. The development of machine-washable stretch leather is essentially proof of its durability - leather is forever, and a Jitrois piece is a solid investment which can be worn for life. The current trend for leather in fashion makes this all the more important for the Jitrois brand - we always aim to be one step ahead in terms of advancing leather technology.

Followers

Many personalities wears jitrois clothes such as Brigitte Nielsen, Brigitte Bardot, Elton John, Cher, Cline Dion, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, FKA twigs, Beyonce Knowles, Barbara Palvin et Mary J. Blige. Liz Hurley, Gong Li, Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone, , Charlotte Rampling, Hedi Klum

Bibliography

• Que sais-je? encyclopedic series published by the French University Press on psychomotricity, Jean Claude Coste (1972).
• Psychomotricit et relaxation psychosomatique, Giselle Soubiran and Jean Claude Coste (1975)
• Corps et graphie. l'expression psychomotrice de l' enfant dans le dessin et la peinture, Giselle Soubiran and Jean Claude Coste(1975)
• La psychomotricit, Jean Claude Coste (1977)