The Return of Josephus Thimister: 1917, Come Again?

It looks as though haute couture fashion week will be with us for at least another season - unfortunately so, because haute couture is about as irrelevant as it gets. You might as well be going to a Renaissance Fair. There was one show I was looking forward to, however: that of Josephus Thimister, the Belgian designer lost in obscurity since as long as I can remember.

Thimister's main claim to fame, if it can be called that, is that he designed for Balenciaga before Nicolas Ghesquière took over. The reasons for his firing are unclear - I've heard the music was too loud at one of his shows, or that he rather unwisely took Fascism as a source of inspiration. Ticklish, even today. In fact, for all the fuss I'm making over him I've only ever seen one photograph of his work.

It was in a volume on Belgian designers in a library in Paris: a black gown with a high neck, long-sleeved, utterly beautiful. I'm not sure what made it so lovely, some secret of construction and draping around the hips. It was one of those gowns which could have transformed a plain-looking woman into a hybrid of Cate Blanchett and Susan Sontag.

Well, he's back, or would like to be. I looked at a few pictures on Diane Pernet's blog and was rather sad to see him engaging in costume drama, just like everyone else at couture week. It's the Russian Revolution, or the First World War, or Bolshevism. And at Dior it's the New Look and the 19th century and the 18th century. It's not even faintly glamorous, just dated. Who cares?