Jean-Louis Scherrer, the couturier whose luxurious dresses and rich embellishments were symbolic of a fruitful period of French fashion in the 1960s, when designers like Yves Saint Laurent and André Courrèges were establishing their own houses, died Thursday at his home in Paris. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by Didier Grumbach, president of the Chambre Syndicale, the governing association for French fashion, who said Scherrer had endured a long illness. He had retired in 1992, after being fired by his own company after ownership changes.

Scherrer had described his style as “very classic,” ranging from bold animal prints to polka-dot dresses. (But not too much fantasy, he said.) His clothes were favored by members of elite society, most notably Anne-Aymone Giscard d’Estaing, the first lady of France in the 1970s.

Other famous clients included Jacqueline Kennedy, Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch, who appeared in his gauzy animal print dresses in the 1977 French film “L’animal.”

His designs were first popularized in America by Bergdorf Goodman, which sold them exclusively after Scherrer opened his couture and ready-to-wear business in 1962 with a store in Paris on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

“It was a time when the American stores were still buying the couture to be recopied,” Grumbach said.

At a Bergdorf fashion show for Scherrer in 1965, the store featured gray and plum wool dresses that were shown with coats, hats and boots covered with guinea hen feathers. A report in The New York Times noted that “the customers reacted like 5-year-olds at a puppet show.”

Jean-Louis Scherrer was born in Paris on Feb. 19, 1935, the son of a psychiatrist. In 1956, after studying fashion, he entered the studio of Christian Dior, working alongside Saint Laurent, and continued with him when Saint Laurent was named the successor to Dior.

After working for Louis Féraud, and then starting his own label, Scherrer became known as a more restrained alternative to the daring designs of Saint Laurent, who had also gone into business for himself.

Scherrer said his months at Dior had made an important impression on him. It was Dior, he said, “who made fashion into a business by changing the length and shape every season.”

While Scherrer managed the business himself, a series of deals, including a sale to the Japanese company Seibu Saison in 1990, left him with little control. The Scherrer label now remains active mostly in licensed products.