Haute Couture Clients

[Boomer]

^ Well it's her husband's business friends and all- Oyl, Darlin'! You remember Dallas, right? The actual oil industry is based in Houston, along with their ridiculously extravagant wives...B)

 

[mikeijames]

I just lost what respect I had for her ... you really don't want to out-Lindsay Ms Lohan ...

In my mind, you want to be nonchalant, to wear whatever you have lightly. It's certainly not nonchalant to leave your guests three times to change But it is nouveau riche

i'd rather her do this than not buy it at all because that's what the couture is faced with. it's part of the crisis with fashion as a whole i really do think....honestly, in this economic environment, where else can one wear the stuff. there's only a select few that appreciate actual fashion in times like these. even the first lady has been forced to don j.crew for fear of populist outrage.

 

[fashionista-ta]

^ I don't think there's anything forced or inauthentic about J Crew and the First Lady. I guess I don't see the 'crisis' in fashion and/or couture as one of the world's leading crises ... hopefully that will not cause my membership to be rescinded I find this couture-changing thing tacky, absurd, not to say obscene and reminiscent of Marie Antoinette.

 

[sonyagirl]

Couture is no longer about profit, and it is barely about the status of being able to afford it anymore (we all know how expensive Balmain runs). Couture shows are just another advertisment for the brand.

I agree. For most brands it isn't about profit. For the smaller ones, it is all they do, so clients are extremely important.

I miss going to couture!

I want to be a client so badly!

 

[sonyagirl]

^i don't exactly know to be fair but do you remember in 'The secret world of haute couture' Becca Cason Thrash said she started on the back row of the couture shows and she worked her way to the front row by raising money for 'the american friends of the louvre' but i dont know how they get their foot in the door

you are very right about business is business

From what I've seen, you do need to build relationships with the houses in order to receive an invitation to the fashion shows. Being Parisian helps a lot. Shopping in Paris helps a lot too. I think the easiest to get an invitation (as an unknown) is by shopping a lot at the flagships in Paris, so much at you are made VIP. Then drop hints that you would like to attend the show. This must be done over some time.

If you don't have enough money to do that, being in the industry, or having contacts in the luxury industry is extremely helpful. In Paris, so much is who you know. Almost everything works by relationships.

 

[sonyagirl]

I remember when I was learning French my professor explained a little bit about the French culture of buying. You don't simply walk into, say, a piano store, and buy a piano. You must be referred there by someone who knows the business owner.

I'm really oversimplying it, but that's the gist of it. It's all about connections and working your way through this elaborate transparent social system.

I'm guessing it's the same with couture. Of course, I wouldn't know from experience

Agreed!

 

[cygnenoir]

Right, because it isn't just about money, that's so vulgar!

You have to have the money, the connections, the pedigree, the interest and an appreciation of the couture process. When I think about all that, I'm a little surprised there are 200 couture customers left! I'm sure many people who can afford it just don't care about such things.

I do think it's interesting how things have changed. One of my friend's great-grandmother used to fly to Paris 2x a year for her wardrobe. Her mother still has all the clothes - it's a lot of everyday clothes like suits but also a few gowns. I don't think it was financially on the same scale as today's couture though, as she was not super rich, but wealthy. What's amazing is that in the 40-50's she actually had consultations with people like Dior and Balenciaga themselves. My friend could care less, so I keep telling her Mom that I would love the collection should she ever tire of it!

 

[mikeijames]

^it's so true. it's like making that argument about a country club or a private school. it isn't simply about the bottom line: if the wrong people get access, the right ones will flee.

 

[Bidwell]

Only trophy wives wear couture.
It is a glorified BURKA.
Real, productive, intelligent women steer clear of the stuff.
Hopefully women's aspirations will take to other venues.

 

[eternitygoddess]

Um.................................................

 

[Boomer]

^ My thoughts exactly...

 

[Harumi]

Only trophy wives wear couture.
It is a glorified BURKA.

The role of a burka is to hide a woman, her personality, her femininity and even her humanity.
A woman who wears haute couture seeks to stand out, to express her taste and personality through an unique costume made to her exact specifications. Also, HC costumes are conceived in such way as to afford the maximum comfort and freedom of movement to their wearer: you slip it on and don't think about it until you take it off.
It's about the opposite of oppressive.

Real, productive, intelligent women steer clear of the stuff.

Actually, plenty of very accomplished, high-flying women own at least one HC costume.
Their intelligence allow them to respect the incredible amount of work and skill that goes into this art, and they are proud to support a fragile piece of cultural history.

Hopefully women's aspirations will take to other venues.

Thank you for your concern towards the fairer sex. Us feeble-minded creatures sure need manly guidance.

That said, most of us can handle a taste for fashion (high and low) and productive social and professional lives, amazingly.

 

[mikeijames]

Only trophy wives wear couture.
It is a glorified BURKA.
Real, productive, intelligent women steer clear of the stuff.
Hopefully women's aspirations will take to other venues.

while this remains an over-generalization, you could basically add any adjective to women and this statement would remain true. with a club of only two hundred or so women IN THE WORLD who subscribe to the couture, one really can't make any broad statements about such a small number of people. it's like saying real, productive, intelligent women steer clear of being billionaires or steer clear of running fortune 500 companies.

 

[thefrancofille]

Wonderful thread. . .

 

[justlooking]

Who wears Paris haute couture? Very few, apparently
July 10, 2010Its client base bare, the high-fashion world may be on its last legs, writes Kellie Hush.

FOR the past 20 years Paris's Haute Couture Week has been dying a slow death. Clients are dwindling, the fashion is becoming more irrelevant and now designers are failing to show. It may be happening one sequin at a time - and the French will certainly put up a good fight - but couture is losing its place at the top of the fashion pyramid.

This week the big shows on the schedule were few and far between - Christian Dior, Chanel, Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Elie Saab and Jean Paul Gaultier. At the height of haute couture in 1945, there were 100 designers presenting collections. Now there are 17.

The New York Times fashion editor, Cathy Horyn, this week summed up the state of haute couture perfectly when she said it was ''slipping off people's radars faster than a UFO".

Fewer than 500 customers worldwide actually buy haute couture, with about 150 regular clients attending the Paris shows twice a year. The starting price for haute couture is $30,000. A gown taking 600 hours of handiwork or more can cost $100,000 and the jewellery millions. Millions of dollars are also spent on the fashion shows. A lot of fuss for a small group of rich shoppers but the haute couture is the pride of French fashion, it is French fashion.

The governing body, the 141-year-old Chambre Syndicale, threw the haute couture a lifeline last year. Seven luxury jewellers were invited to be a part of a new haute couture jewellery day in the hope of attracting more attention and luring wealthy customers. Five booked shows last week.

Dana Thomas, the Paris-based author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre, lays much of the blame on Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of the luxury goods company LVMH, which owns a large slice of luxury fashion, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Givenchy. She believes he saw couture shows not as a service to clients, or an opportunity to sell beautiful clothes, but as a vehicle for hype, advertising and marketing and a way to sell perfume and logo-covered accessories to the mass market.

"Arnault encouraged John Galliano at Dior and Alexander McQueen at Givenchy to turn couture into a spectacle and they did. It was exciting at first, but this model has grown tired. Meanwhile, it scared away the clients, who found nothing to buy and loathed the circus aspect of it."

Not all the blame can be laid at Arnault's door. The global economy has also added a few gilded nails to the couture coffin. At the end of last year the celebrated French haute couture designer Christian Lacroix was declared bankrupt. The once grand company was reduced to a licensing operation to sell just perfumes and accessories. According to Thomas, the only house that does well in couture is the privately owned company Chanel. "Chanel doesn't make money but it doesn't lose it, either - mainly because Karl Lagerfeld still offers chic, wearable clothes instead of wild costume-like get-ups. Chanel hasn't sullied the image of the brand with soulless mass-marketed junk. They send the collection to their clients and all is done discreetly, which clients prefer. There will always be a need for couture - there are always rich people who want extreme quality and exclusivity - but couture as it is now is finished, because it is no longer relevant."

The fashion journalist Jamie Huckbody, who has covered the haute couture for 15 years, is certain it still has a future. "There will always be a demand for the unique and the handmade. What does feel outdated are those creations that are more carnival drag queen than stealth wealth, and that are just made for media titillation. They just look inappropriate."

smh.com.au

 

[Fatalefashion]

What does feel outdated are those creations that are more carnival drag queen than stealth wealth, and that are just made for media titillation

One mind, many worlds!

 

[Boomer]

I just don't understand why things are any different now than a few years ago...? It seems like 'the death of couture' subject comes up every 6 months for the last forty years...

 

[Crying Diamonds]

Well that's a depressing article.
And though I adore couture entirely and the whole idea of it, the way couture is looking these days it may as well bow out now instead of dying a long and humiliating death by becoming a sickeningly expensive pret-a-porter which, though totally acceptable and expected years ago now is only sickeningly decadent to many.
This seems like the only direction it can go in as it appears that we have already had our showy costume couture period that, according to the above article, paved the way to its demise.

 

[ChristianThomas]

I think Couture will disappear in the near future... Couture is just being overwhelmed by the amount of designers and brands in the world.
That and of course the fact that the people with the skill to do so will quit someday and I doubt there are enough young people who would want to learn the craft so religiously.

Of course it won't vanish of the world, but I think that it will transit into small presentations of collections, perhaps even just private viewings for the smaller brands and it will turn into a more personal high-scale custom made-to-measure service for the clients. Rather than being a big show, it might just turn into a very private occasion with the designer where one can get an outfit of perfect quality. Make it special again, more exclusive.

And that might transition back into fashion shows one day, perhaps when fashion in general is on a low point, similar to when couture first began with Worth, when there was no such thing as designers, you only had tailors and women sewing the clothes for the family. Couture back then was essentially the luxury of the (French) royalty made accessibly for the 'common' (although still rich) people. Couture set the trend for all the rest of the clothing so to say, but nowadays couture really is just a show and the RTW collections set more of a trend for the everyday clothing than couture does.

 

[Harumi]

It seems like 'the death of couture' subject comes up every 6 months for the last forty years...

You are absolutely right. HC is like that hypochondriac rich old aunt that has been dying for 30 years and will outlive everybody at the end.
That particular article is poorly researched and mostly nonsense, imo.

First, the dwindling of HC clients number is not Arnault's fault (the man is foul but it's ridiculous to blame him for everything).
In 1945 there was no RTW, there were HC houses at every street corners and HC was relatively cheap (as was labour) so that's why there were so many clients.
Nowadays, most women with an interest in HC have been out-priced and luxury RTW has filled the gap.
And anyway, the number of HC clients has increased lately, with China and India being the prime booming market. Considering these two countries will be the two richest in the world in 50 years, I doubt HC houses are shaking in their boots.

Second, Dior and Chanel are notoriously the two big houses who make a profit (I don't know how the smaller houses like Mabille or Sorbier are doing).
It's doesn't actually matters that the gowns on the Dior Runway are unwearable, it's HC so the clients have the gowns they like modified to their taste and comfort.

Third, no runway show doesn't mean bad financial form. Givenchy just spent more money on an intimate presentation than on a fancy show. Some houses are coming clothes to their salon origins and away from big publicity blow-outs. I though they would be celebrating that, considering the tone of the article.

Yes, it's true that HC is no longer a platform for avant-garde and fashion forecast, but it says more about RTW than it says about HC. Fashion is now a trend-based business where, with few creative exceptions, designers present every 3 or 6 months collections that were born in the same two or three forecasting agencies.

Keep singing HC eulogy, it's not going anywhere.