Claude Montana
In 1974 Claude Bitton along with many others were pioneers in bringing high fashion into Toronto, Ontario. Each one of them including Claude Bitton had a dream of making Toronto a destination place for fashion shopping. Claude brought luxury to fashion by introducing Claude Montana, Nina Ricci and Thierry Mugler to Hazelton Lanes in Yorkville. Claude Bitton liked the vision and inspirations of each designer as each one of their designs were strong, bold, and masculine but yet feminine all at the same time. These designers can still be found among shops throughout Hazelton Lanes today.
Fashion Icon
Claude Bitton felt that the power look in women’s clothing was defined in the mid-1980 in Claude Montana’s designs. Claude Bitton liked that Claude Montana had an assertive presence in his designs but yet did not sacrifice the female form.
Claude Montana started his designer career with stints in producing paper mache jewelry adorned with rhinestones and biker leathers. Over the following years he developed an unmistakable style until he cemented his place in fashion history.
Few designers can be admired for the surety of cut; sensuousness of appearance, femininity that is beneath the bold forms and the luxurious seductions of fabrics that designer Claude Montana can be noted for. His mastery of fashion design plays between the abstract forms of art and the conventions of clothing. With top-heavy geometry and pencil skirts or trousers was not common until Claude Montana offered this option. Constructivism was Montana’s influence for work. Montana’s design’s come to life through animation of gyrating proportions, often with exaggerated shoulders or collars, almost invariably with a very narrow waist.
Claude Bitton liked how Claude Montana was extreme for his time. He had emulated avant-garde art. As a designer, Montana’s masculine but yet feminine feel to his design’s have left him attributed to this controversial profile. Claude Montana has been a practitioner of a kind of isolated, non-referential abstraction while passionately and compellingly exploring fashion at it most distant cut. Claude Montana’s design survival is a classic figure with a lasting impact.