François Berthoud is one of the most original fashion
illustrators of the late 20th and early 21st century.
More than drawing illustrations with pen or pencil,
Berthoud likes to sculpt, scrape, scratch, and dig
them out of different materials (wood, linoleum,
pressed paper, celluloid film). Like a woodcut-maker
or a goldsmith, he creates matrixes in which he then
transfers the figures he has sketched on paper,
reducing them to the essential.
Hailed by avant-garde designers for his elegant sense
of detachment and a sharp sense of irony, Berthoud
ennobles things that seem marginal (a glove, a scarf,
a high heel, the tip of a boot) by turning them into
archetypes. Informed by a visual culture rooted in
conceptual art, he produces images of the female
form that possess an exacting precision and are
imbued with latent eroticism.
