The titles of the alum paintings, from Corset vert to the serial Garde-robe, hint at what they depict, albeit in an abstracted form. ‘Garde-Robe’, literally meaning ‘ward-robe’, is how Claudine Lachaud refers to the repertory of costumes spanning different periods and styles that the seamstresses at Atelier Caraco consult when designing outfits intended for the theatre and other performing arts. Caraco specializes, among other, in different techniques of undergarment and corset-making, which are well-represented in the ‘Garde-Robe’. While living above Atelier Caraco, the artist could peruse this archive at his leisure. In the resulting Garde-robe series, details of appropriated sewing patterns and vintage costumes appear in truncated form – a sleeve here, a bodice there – punctured by holes and adorned with stripes. There is undeniably an element of fetishism involved in this fixation with corsets and other ‘bodyguards’, which stand in a metonymic relation to the body parts that they are meant to conceal and guard.