The air of nothing, his graceful slender creatures marked the 20th century as well as a number of artists and fashion designers. Because, yes, the “Parisiennes” are orphans. The designer Kiraz, their creator, died at the age of 96 in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, on August 11, 2020.
Like Tomi Ungerer, Villemot, Crepax or Manara, Kiraz will have invented a vision of women, sensual and sassy, who belonged only to him. These beautiful ethereal odalisques, with slender bodies, skinny legs and hourglass figures, were always endowed with huge almond eyes, and always dressed in haute couture. They also had that lightness (which some might qualify as unbearable) and that frivolous spirit that made their charm.
As soon as he arrived in Paris, Kiraz began to draw his first young women with incomparable figures, frivolous, sensual and sophisticated Parisians. Kiraz
Born in Cairo, Egypt, on August 25, 1923, to Armenian parents who emigrated from Turkey following the massacres of 1895, Edmond Kirazian, alias Kiraz, developed a taste for drawing from his childhood. He trained as an autodidact without trusting the drawing schools of which he thought "they cut off all inspiration" . At 18, Kiraz managed to publish some political cartoons in the Egyptian press. “After three or four years, I had seen it all , ” he confided in 2008 to the JDD on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition dedicated to him by the Carnavalet Museum.
"Create something"
At the time, the young self-taught designer became a renowned cartoonist. “It worked well for me in Egypt,” he told our colleague Didier Pasamonik on the Actua BD site. I was earning five times more than my father's salary, who was director of Telegraphs and Telephones. ” But he gets bored quickly. "I didn't have any particular political opinions ," he confided to Actua BD. I aspired to create something. I didn't see myself drawing caricatures all my life… ”
Determined "to become a painter and to confront Picasso , Matisse or Modigliani " , he arrived in Paris in 1946. He was 22 years old and moved into a friend's apartment on avenue Montaigne. And saw his first shock. "In Egypt, there were only plump women, " he told Didier Pasamonik. And then all of a sudden, in Paris, I see… dragonflies. Really, it marked me! ”
He then designed his first young women with an incomparable silhouette, frivolous, sensual and sophisticated Parisians. Hugh Hefner falls in love with his sketches, finding that “Kiraz's 'misses' are absolutely unique”. But before the founder of Playboy , it's Marcel Dassault who notices his drawings. “I remember that one day Marcel Dassault called me: 'Can we work together one day?' He was a fan, ” Kiraz readily recounted.
Humor and sensuality
Dassault invites him to eat “Parisiennes” every week in Jour de France , which he had just launched. From 1959 until the 2000s, the Parisiennes of Kiraz frolic in the columns of various magazines, from Jour de France to Vogue , including Playboy , Gala , Paris Match or Grazia . Advertising is also interested in him, and he will illustrate many campaigns, such as those of Canderel, Renault, Perrier or Scandale. To find inspiration, Kiraz said that he had only to sit on the terrace of the café La Rotonde, in Montparnasse, and observe.
In his seventy-year career, his work has never ceased to be sensual and mischievous. The humor is there, creating a funny and tender universe. "Kiraz captured the essence of fashion week after week with the eye and acuity of a great couturier," admitted Christian Lacroix. But above all, under their evaporated air, his freedom-loving daughters accompanied the evolution of French society at the heart of the Thirty Glorious Years and told the emancipation of women.
In his seventy-year career, Kiraz's work has never ceased to be sensual and mischievous. Kiraz
"Kiraz only retained from the world what delighted him, " his partner, Sabine Bastien , said on her death. He knew where he came from. He knew that chaos, destruction was the norm. So he had to enchant the world. ”
