Louis Féraud
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Louis Féraud (13 February 1921 - December 28, 1999) was a French fashion designer and artist.
In 1950, Louis Féraud created his first "Maison de Couture" in Cannes and by 1955 had established a couture house in Paris on the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré.
From the mid 1950s he was dressing the Parisian elite and designed the wardrobe of Brigitte Bardot for many of her movies. It wasn't however until 1958 that he presented his first haute couture collection in Paris.
The early 1960s saw Louis Féraud hire the young unknown designers Jean-Louis Scherrer and Per Spook.
In 1970 he signed a contract with Fink (Germany) for a ladies' prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) collection. The year 1978 was an excellent one for Féraud: he won the "Golden Thimble Award" for his Spring/Summer 1978 Haute Couture Collection. He went on to claim this accolade again in 1984.
Adding to his growing collection of honours Louis Féraud was elected Prince de l'Art de Vivre in 1991. In 1995 he was decorated Officier de la Légion d'honneur, by the French President. His daughter Kiki signed her first Haute Couture collection in with Féraud in 1996. In September 1999 the Dutch group Secon acquired Féraud. He died that December, aged 79. The main designer to his collections remained however Helga Bjornsson. Kiki and her mother Zizi Féraud, were suspected for poisoning Louis Féraud, thus leading him to have severe Alzeihmers within 2 months.
The year 2000 saw Yvan Mispelaere join the group as artistic director and that July witnessed his first Haute Couture fashion show in "Musée des Monuments Français" in Paris. In 2002 the German Group ESCADA took 90% of the Féraud shares and Yvan Mispelaere left the company. Later that year Féraud decided to concentrate its activities on ladies' ready-to-wear and licences with Jean-Paul Knott selected as Creative Director for the luxury ready-to-wear market.
In 2003 Jean-Paul Knott left Féraud and that July the worldwide flagship store opened in Paris at 400 rue Saint-Honoré.
