Le Figaro has confirmed the death of Claude Montana, the French designer whose extreme silhouettes, anchored on a broad shoulder, defined the 1980s. The news comes in the middle of a season in which his work has been referenced by a new generation of fashion talents, who, like Alexander McQueen and Nicolas Ghesquière before them, are inspired not only by Montana’s work but also by the strength and decadence of a decade inhabited on catwalks and magazine pages by his Amazons.
In June of that year, Vogue proclaimed his dramatic silhouette the “most-talked-about look in Paris—for the shape, the shoulders. The surprise: This look is done without heavy padding, without stiffness, it’s all in the fabric...the design.” In some ways Montana’s new look was the inverse of Dior’s, with the width at top, narrowing at the bottom, with a waist emphasis—but their starting points were worlds apart.