THE FAMILY / Andrée Putman

 

Born in 1925, of an intellectual father, normalist perfectly mastering seven languages, but having vowed austerity and seclusion in reaction to his environment, and a mother concertist, talented pianist, whimsical, who consoled himself in the frivolity of "being an immense artist without a scene". Andrée retains the best, an early artistic taste but also the rejection of bourgeois conventions. Andrée Putman became a journalist for several magazines and joined in 1958, as a stylist, the chain of popular shops Prisunic, where she is working "to do beautiful things for nothing": she imagines furniture and decoration items at a price affordable. She then illustrates herself in the Mafia style agency. In 1971, with her friend Didier Grumbach, she created an innovative company specializing in the development of ready-to-wear: Designers and Industrialists. In the concept store of the rue de Rennes in Paris, she will be the intuition revealing many talents, such as Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Issey Miyake, Claude Montana or Thierry Mugler.