Christian Marie Marc Lacroix was born in 1951 in Arles, France. In early childhood Lacroix showed a flair for design by putting together little albums on theater and opera, collages assembling family portraits, and reproductions by Christian Bérard. He left his native Arles to study the history of art in Montpellier, and then enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1973. He wrote a master's thesis on French costume in the paintings of the seventeenth century while at the same time taking courses at the École du Louvre to become a museum curator. The creations of Christian Lacroix embody in spectacular combinations his Provençal roots, his passion for folklore, and his fascination with the history of clothing. His artfully unexpected mixtures express a new form of luxury, simultaneously youthful, baroque, and sophisticated. Lacroix mingles bright tones and extravagant materials in creations that express a refined blending of different cultures; distant and forgotten costumes form the basis, if not the raison d'être, for his work.