Paris: Dutch fashion designer Josephus Thimister, a former artistic director at Balenciaga, died at the age of 57, said the French Fashion Federation Wednesday.
“It is sad that the Federation de la Haute Couture et de La mode has heard of the death of Josephus Thimister, whose avant-garde style, elegance and skills in cutting have contributed to the creative momentum in Paris for many years,” the body said in a statement.
From 1991 to 1997, Thimister worked for Luxury Ready-to-Wear lines from Balenciaga before he set up his own house. In 2005 he became the main designer at the French luxury shoe label Charles Jourdan.
Born in Maastricht in 1962, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp before he worked under Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Patou in the Patou house in Paris.
In 2010, after he had closed his own house due to a lack of investments, he was persuaded to return to Paris Couture by Federation Chief Didier Grumbach.
The subsequent collection called “Blooddhed and Oreelance” with Kozack jackets that spatter his fake blood and pants with brown paint to look like burns was described by a critic as “grim, gloomy and disturbing”.
“I am not a political person, but fashion has a voice and it is time to express my views,” Thimister, who was of Russian-Dutch extraction, told an interviewer at the time.
“We still feel the after -shock of the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of communism, when Europe fell apart,” he said.
“We have never recovered. We have lost our soul and our mind.”
According to the Fashion Dictionary of France, Thimister has left his mark in Balenciaga “because of his minimalist style and great skills in cutting the image of the house”.
