André Courrèges was born in 1923 in Pau, in the French Pyrenees. He trained as a civil engineer before entering couture, apprenticed at Jeanne Lafaurie, and spent eleven years (1950–61) in Balenciaga's atelier, where he rose to chief assistant. In 1961 he opened his own house with his wife Coqueline at 48 avenue Kléber.

The 1964 Collection

His Spring 1964 Moon Girl collection is among the most-cited Paris shows of the twentieth century. It presented: a knee-short pinafore, below-the-knee then mid-thigh hemlines, white vinyl flat-heel boots, white-framed wrap-around sunglasses, trouser suits cut straight from the shoulder, and geometric cut-outs in saturated white. The collection was accused, simultaneously, of being infantile and of being brutal. WWD called it "the first collection since Dior that has changed the silhouette." It was.

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I do not design for grandmothers. — André Courrèges

The Miniskirt Dispute

The question of who invented the miniskirt — Mary Quant on the King's Road in 1962 or Courrèges in Paris in 1964 — has been litigated for sixty years. Quant was first to sell the silhouette commercially; Courrèges was first to bring it to couture. Both are, accurately, credited. Courrèges himself insisted, "I am the man who invented the miniskirt. Mary Quant only commercialised the idea." The claim is partly correct.

The Ready-to-Wear

In 1967 Courrèges launched Couture Future, a ready-to-wear line distributed through department stores — one of the earliest licensed diffusion lines from a Paris couturier, pre-dating YSL's Rive Gauche by a few months (timing disputed). The brand diversified through the 1970s into menswear, accessories, fragrances, and an eyewear licence.

Decline and Revival

Courrèges withdrew from the couture calendar in 1985. He suffered from Parkinson's disease from the 1990s onward and handed operations to Coqueline and to his students. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 2016. The label was acquired in 2018 by Artemis Group and has been run since 2020 by Nicolas Di Felice, whose recent collections have restored the house to international buyer attention.