Luxury brand Christian Lacroix is to cut most of its staff and close its main clothing design business after a court approved a restructuring plan.

The French fashion house will shed 100 staff, leaving just 11 employees to manage its accessories and perfumes.

The fashion label has never made a profit and earlier this year was forced to seek bankruptcy protection after incurring €10m ($15m) in losses.

There might be light at the end of the tunnel for Christian Lacroix.

After accumulating over 14 million dollars in losses and nearly facing liquidation, the fashion house received a serious bid from Italy’s Borletti Group.

Borletti is the owner of La Rinascente, Italy’s largest department store chain, and French department stores Printemps.

Another sad story in the fashion industry this morning as one of France’s biggest names announces financial trouble.

Christian Lacroix has reportedly filed for voluntary bankruptcy in an attempt to protect the company from creditors. The current economic crisis and company expansion has been blamed for the situation.

Recent sales of Lacroix’s summer collection are down 35pc, according to French media reports. In April, some large US retailers reduced orders for 2009 Lacroix merchandise.

According to our friend the Real Estalker and The Wall Street Journal, Fashion designer Christian Lacroix is selling his Paris apartment for €2 million (about $2.6 million).

The roughly 2,150-square-foot apartment is in the chic Marais district.

The house, in a late-17th-century building near the historic Place des Vosges and the Picasso Museum, has an upper floor with public rooms designed around an interior patio of roughly 200 square feet, and a lower floor with four bedrooms.