In yesterday's post we mentioned Janine Janet in connection with the costumes for Jean Cocteau's 1960 film "Testament of Orpheus".
It is actually worth rediscovering her as the Parisian painter and sculptor worked in different fields, from art and costumes to decorative design, creating interior design pieces and imaginative window displays.
Born in 1913 in Tampon on the French island of La Réunion, Janet spent her childhood surrounded by exotic nature. Her experiences on La Réunion as a child instilled in her a passion for rich and Baroque inspirations and a profound love for nature and the animal world, making her discover some of the materials she later on employed in her artworks, from mother-of-pearl to shells, plants and tree bark.
After studying at the École des Beaux arts in Toulouse and Paris, Janet moved to the École des Art Décoratifs, experimenting with painting, engraving and sculpture.
Reacting to rationalism she started creating visionary pieces, such as sculptures made with plaster and covered in shells, mother-of-pearl, birch bark, wheat straw, oats and rye.
Janet became a refined sculptor and, from the 1940s on, she created unique window displays, at times characterized by a surreal twist, for the most elegant Parisian fashion houses, including Balenciaga, Jacques Fath, Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Madeleine De Rauch, Pierre Balmain, Hermès and Nina Ricci. 
The sculptures made in collaboration with designer Cristóbal Balenciaga became particularly well-known, turning her into a household name in the Parisian fashion scene.
For many seasons the windows of the Balenciaga boutique in 10 Avenue George V featured her fantastic sculptures: the Spanish designer gave her carte blanche as long as his windows didn't feature any of his designs. Apart from conceiving the windows as an extension of his work as a couturier, the decision of putting art pieces in the windows rather than his original creations was also a way for Balenciaga to ptotect his designs and avoid getting copied, guaranteeing in this way maximum exclusivity to his clients.
Her first windows for Balenciaga in 1952 were representations of the three elements – Air, Earth and Water. These sculpture were aggregates of different objects, at times they incorporated materials from the haute couture ateliers, such as feathers. These pieces were not just a momentary fad for Balenciaga, but they were the result of a long research into high-quality materials and rare techniques. Janet rebalanced her passion for Baroque fantasies with the values of the maison and these first pieces turned into the beginning of a creative partnership between the sculptor and the fashion designer.
The first three figures she created for Balenciaga captured the attention of British architect, interior designer, and furniture designer Dennis Lennon, who had just started desiging the interiors of the Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2), a British ocean liner built for the Cunard Line.
Lennon visited her studio and, impressed by Janet's materials and works, he invited her "on board": for the QE2 project Janet made four statues representing Fire, Earth, Air and Water, each of them covered in semi precious materials found in the sea that Janet collected from all over the world (the triangular mother-of-pearl elements covering the statue representing water came for example from China).
The statues, each of them around five foot high, unveiled in Paris to great acclaim, were then installed in the Grill Room of the ocean liner.
For Balenciaga, Janet also made three iconic wooden busts representing a king, a queen and a valet, with intricate details made using iron nails.
Their unique three-dimensional quality probably inspired Balenciaga to create heavily encrusted motifs on his own designs. Janet continued to work for Balenciaga and other fashion houses such as Lanvin for years, developing sketches, drawings and watercolours for their window displays.
Analysing the sculptures she made is particularly exciting as you can spot in them shells and madrepore corals, straw and rye, materials that Janet employed to transform her statues into mythological beings such as nymphs, naiads, fauns and unicorns.
Feeling he shared an affinity and a vision with her but also an interest in mythology, Jean Cocteau commissioned Janet the costumes, masks and sculptures for his film "Testament of Orpheus", among them the horse costume that became the starting point for Virginie Viard’s recent Cruise 2022 collection for Chanel.
Yet Janet wasn't just an artist creating unique window displays: she distinguished indeed herself also as an interior designer and decorator, desiging lamps, screens, and furniture pieces. 
She created pieces for Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, Haviland, Arthus-Bertrand and collaborated with decorators John Dévoluy and Chapelain-Midy, applying to wall decor and furniture her decorative motifs developed with innovative techniques.
Quite often her pieces integrated figures made from pressed feathers, leaves, butterflies and lace and she included in the celamine, panlame, brass and lacquered wood pieces of furniture created with John Devoluy (and manufactured by Normacem in the mid-'50s) unusual materials such as eggshell, straw and butterfly wings.
Nowadays it is not so rare to spot some of her pieces at various art and interior design auctions, especially her watercolour sketches for window displays and fashion houses that show a great passion for art, but also a great understanding of the world of fashion and marketing communication. Why should we rediscover her work? Well, Janine Janet's passion for unusual materials, research into innovative techniques and interest in nature may inspire us less commercial and more sustainable window displays.
