Bally Les jambes 1964

This original 1964 French advertising poster was designed by Bernard Villemot for Bally and is known as Les Jambes, or “The Legs”. Created to promote the company’s women’s footwear, it reduces the female figure to a bold arrangement of limbs, colour and silhouette.

The composition centres upon a seated woman whose elongated legs cross and fold across the image. Her black dress merges with the heavy outlines surrounding the figure, while the red shoes provide vivid accents that immediately draw attention to the advertised product.

Villemot places the figure against a warm orange background, combining mustard yellow, black and red in broad, flat areas of colour. The irregular, hand-drawn contours give the design an expressive quality, while the white Bally name and the artist’s signature balance the otherwise almost abstract composition.

Bernard Villemot was one of the leading French poster artists of the twentieth century. His celebrated collaboration with Bally produced a remarkable series of images in which simplified silhouettes, expressive colour and negative space transformed footwear advertising into sophisticated modern graphic art.

A striking and highly decorative example of 1960s French fashion advertising, this original poster would make an excellent addition to a collection devoted to Bally, footwear, Bernard Villemot or twentieth-century graphic design.

Original poster

Mode - Advertising

Orange

Print by De la Vasselais

Good condition