Julie de Libran

Julie de Libran (born February 23, 1972) is a French fashion designer. She has worked for leading fashion houses such as Gianfranco Ferré, Gianni Versace, Prada and Louis Vuitton.^[1] She specializes in women’s fashion, celebrity and event dressing and made-to-measure. In January 2014 she created her own fashion line, Julie de Libran, a women’s couture collection. In May 2014 she was named the artistic director of Sonia Rykiel.^[2]

Early life

Julie de Libran was born in Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France, and raised in Vernègues, a small village close to Les Baux-de-Provence. When de Libran was eight years old, she moved to the United States with her family and spent the 1980s in California. At a very early age she began to be passionate about fashion, creativity and design, and at high school, started drawing some sketches and taking them to a seamstress.^[3]

Education

In 1990 Julie de Libran went to Italy to study fashion. She went to the Istituto Artistico dell’Abbigliamento Marangoni in Milan where she studied fashion design and pattern making. She then went to Paris, to study draping at l’Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.^[1]

Career

From 1991 to 1994 she worked in Milan with Gianfranco Ferré on his own brand while he was also designing Christian Dior.^[4] She worked close to Gianfranco Ferré on his women's collections and she designed his line Oaks by Ferré and Ferré Jeans Collection.

In 1994, she moved to Paris, and worked with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac designing his women’s collection.^[5] In 1996 she went back to Italy to Gianni Versace where she assisted Gianni and then Donatella Versace on his and then her Women's Collection and Atelier Collection shown in Paris.^[1] In 1998 she joined Prada for 10.5 years as the design director for women’s ready-to-wear, lingerie, and VIP and celebrities dressing. Working beside Miuccia Prada she helped establish the Italian firm with celebrity and event dressing.^[5] She created in 2003 the Prada made-to-measure atelier in Paris.^[6] From 2008 to 2014 she joined the French fashion house Louis Vuitton where she was the womenswear creative and studio director.^[5] She worked very closely with Marc Jacobs on all the creative process for ready-to-wear, accessories, ad campaigns and fashion shows.^[7][8] She was the designer of Icons, the house's line of classic pieces, as well as the cruise and pre-fall collections.^[9][10] In 2013 The Telegraph called her “Louis Vuitton's secret weapon”.^[1] In January 2014 she created her own fashion line Julie de Libran, a women’s couture collection.^[2]

On May 15, 2014 she is named Artistic Director of Sonia Rykiel overlooking all lines of Sonia Rykiel’s womenswear and accessories, Sonia By Sonia Rykiel, the children's line and the home collection.^[11] Her first collection for Sonia Rykiel, Spring Summer 2015, is shown in Paris in September 2014.^[2] Her pre-fall 2015 show is held at the Jane Hotel in New York in January 2015.^[12] Her fall 2015-2016 show takes place in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres parisian store in March 2015.^[13] On that occasion, Julie de Libran works with publisher Thomas Lenthal and artist André Saraiva to transform the Sonia Rykiel flagship store into a bookstore filled with 50,000 books.^[14]

References