• Home
• /
• Opinion

Fashion's 'King of Cling' did not get his due

Herve L. Leroux passed away recently, at just 60. The rather quiet reaction by the fashion Press to this sad news made me think. For those not in the industry, Herve was the man who gave us the Bandage Dress. You know the dress that fits you like a second skin? The one Kim Kardashian wore in the opening credits of the first series of Keeping up with the Kardashians?

Though today you can find versions of this dress in many high street brands, the original bandage dress was by Herve Leger. Designed in 1989, by Herve Peugnet (he later came to be known as Herve L. Leroux), the creator of the label Herve Leger, these dresses were described by fashion's fiercest critic, Suzy Menkes, as "a recipe for the Nineties". And it was the go-to dress of supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and Cindy Crawford. The Herve Leger bandage dress is as iconic as Pierre Cardin's chain mail dress and Diane Von Furstenberg's wrap dress. Yet his untimely demise did not create headlines and few celebrities took to social media to remnisce; even those who had once been devotees of the Bandage Dress. Cindy at least did put up a picture on instagram and said, "Remembering the man who created the Bandage Dress, which held you in all the right places."

Nine years after creating this dress, the Herve Léger label was sold to Los Angeles-based Tunisian designer, Max Azria, who re-launched the brand in 2007. The bandage dress remains the core of the label's collection. Herve launched his own independent label, Herve Leroux (a name given to him by his mentor Karl Lagerfeld who Leroux worked under in the early part of his career). Though Mariah Carey, Dita Von Tesse and Kate Perry have all been seen in Leroux originals, the label didn't soar as expected.

He had hoped to come to Dubai soon, as he had had a set of loyal clients in the region. It was in this context that I interviewed him. Though it was an e-mail interview, he struck me as both a humble and elegant man. He said: "I do not think you plan to create a icon. This is a mistake many designers make. It just happens. Before I was in fashion I worked as a hat-maker and a hairdresser, and muolding is technique that comes naturally to hat-makers. I saw some left-over lurex bandages and decided to mould a dress on a wooden frame. And that was how the dress was born. The reaction to it was immediate. The bandage dress cache has dropped from being the uniform of the supermodels to the dress of the fashion wannabes, something the designer was aware of. "I feel nothing towards the bandage dresses you see now. Today, they can be 'Made in China'".

While he may have been called the 'King of Cling', he discouraged women from wearing overtly tight or super revealing dresses. His dresses were about sculpture and not exposure. He said, "I believe beautiful woman have to have shape." A designer who put creativity before commerce stayed true to his philosophy of dressing throughout his career, and this deserves to be celebrated. Fashion's reaction to his passing away only speaks of poor taste, something that is unacceptable from an industry that prides itself on elegance. - sujata@khaleejtimes.com

Sujata Assomull is Consulting Fashion Editor at Khaleej Times