You have to be your own critical mirror." This was followed by quotes from Sartre and Picasso. Our hearts would have sank if it weren't for his ability to convey such passion and sincerity, and not least because his "vairy 'eavy" French accent makes everything sound all the more wise.In the Goodman Library, some 100 students are gathered It's the second-largest turn-out, after Hugh, all term. Among them, judging by the glamorous ensembles, Oxford's student style leaders: a girl called Kitty in a vintage Pucci-esque dress and Prada sling-backs; a part-time model/student, Anna, sporting an expensive-looking black suit and a Gucci handbag; a young man in an eye-popping psychedelic shirt and matching headscarf; and a group of girls dressed like Voguettes doing the Fifties prom trend all tulle skirts and tiaras. Then there are the two Japanese students from Central Saint Martins School of Art, donning turquoise mohair and orange velvet, and another couple wearing matching army-surplus gear, also studying in London, who have made a pilgrimage to Oxford to see the legendary designer.As they applaud, Ungaro takes his place in front of them. In his beige suit, he looks more like a dapper professor than one of the last great French couturiers. With his brown, silver-flecked hair and sharp, twinkling blue eyes, he looks nothing like his 68 years.
"I've had nothing done," he tells me later, pulling at the sides of his face with typical comic timing. "I do one hour gymnastics every morning," he adds, by way of explaining his Peter Pan physique.A short film is played, mapping his eminent rise in the fashion world, from the six-year apprenticeship he served with Balenciaga, the designer's designer, where he would ask the Master's permission to work weekends, to the time he spent with Courr?s, the 1960s It-designer who pioneered the stark A-line silhouette and metal dresses that were to become some of the decade's most enduring images.It was 1965 when Ungaro, aged 32, set up his own fashion house, slap-bang in the middle of one of fashion's most exciting and optimistic eras. "I had no money, but I had help from four kind young ladies who worked for me. I did all the cleaning myself, so that it was nice for them when they came in in the morning." Shots of panda-eyed models with Vidal Sassoon bobs, in dynamic poses wearing stiff little A-line suits, splashed with Jackson Pollock-style prints, fill the screen. Next, the Seventies and rampant prints, full skirts and pinstripe jackets, recalling one of his major inspirations: the gypsies of Aix-en-Provence, the town where he grew up. "What I did was to find my own identity, build myself step by step, establish my own vocabulary."Cue images of the Eighties some 30 models posing at the end of his runway in a sea of ruched polka-dot dresses with gigantic shoulder pads and matching veiled hats. More recent images follow of him in his studio, wearing the couturier's traditional white lab coat, nimbly draping a bolt of silk about a mannequin's waist, and all to the strains of a Beethoven symphony, music that he says he cannot work without.
"I don't sketch anymore," he says, "just work straight on the body. I need to feel it, the fabric on the body."What the film doesn't dwell on is the Nineties, a decade that slouched on to the fashion scene in murky colours with the birth of "intellectual" deconstructed grunge a sea change that almost extinguished Ungaro's exuberance. It's a shame none of this is mentioned because few designers, once relegated to the fashion equivalent of Siberia, stage such impressive comebacks. Which is, of course, what Ungaro has done.Now that the pendulum has swung back in his favour, the natural "maximalist" (he has dismissed minimalism as "intellectual fascism"), and his deliciously feminine, wafting, madly printed, jewel-coloured clothes are just the sort of thing that his new vanguard of loyal, young, paparazzi-friendly fans really want to be seen in. His business has also been reinvigorated by the investment of the Ferragamo family, which bought 80 per cent of Ungaro in 1996, enabling him to open new stores (a London flagship opened last month on New Bond Street) and to hire emerging strong talent, including the 34-year-old Giambattista Valli, who has been credited with helping Ungaro to update the image of the house.While Ungaro delivers his speech, an unassuming and touching talk full of anecdotes and exquisite Ungaro-isms: "Fashion? You love it or you leave it!".. "Fashion is not an art, it is a craft."... "You are young, beautiful, you have the chance to be here in Oxford You have to be critical with yourself You have to become your own work of art!"...
