By Beverley Rider | Photograph by Tommaso Sartori
She inspired everyone from Yves Saint Laurent to Rei Kawakubo, but Line Vautrin’s early days weren’t so promising. Born in 1913, the sculptor, jeweler and designer started out as a greeter for fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. With her fiery personality, Vautrin lasted only a few days. Still, Schiaparelli influenced her later creations, and Vautrin opened her first boutique in Paris when she was 25. During World War II, Vautrin’s “little somethings” in the form of jewelry, gilded boxes and accessories were popular with Parisian women, whose determined elegance became a form of resistance to the Nazis. In 1950, the “queen of buttons” invented a new type of resin, which she heated, carved and twisted to create sensual shapes. Her famous convex mirrors were then formed by encrusting small pieces of colored glass or resin into these frames. By the ’60s, she had developed a devoted clientele that included Brigitte Bardot and Ingrid Bergman.
David Gill, the London gallerist, has been pivotal in introducing the work to a new generation including Kawakubo, founder of the Comme des Garçons anti-fashion clothing line, who gave a selling exhibition of Vautrin’s jewelry in Tokyo in 1990. Vautrin died in 1997, and soon “prices for her work began to explode—increasing tenfold by 2007,” says James Zemaitis, head of 20th-century design at Sotheby’s. A piece now costs $10,000 to $100,000. Her dreams of the elements and mythology shine through in some of her work, which often focused on stars and constellations. Vautrin called them her miroirs sorcières or “witches’ mirrors.”
Sources: Galerie Chastel-Maréchal, 5 rue Bonaparte, Paris Chastel-marechal.com, +33 1 40 46 82 61, email@example.com Liz O’Brien, 800A Fifth Avenue, New York 212-755-3800 firstname.lastname@example.org