Haute Couture - Right Off the Rack
By Christina Binkley
At the semiannual haute couture shows last week in Paris, I was curious to learn about this exacting craft, which we are told caters to the 200 or so women in the world who buy hand-sewn, completely made-to-order dresses costing as much as a small house in Kansas City.
I attended the haute couture show of Lefranc-Ferrant, a pair of talented new designers who showed finely executed, flattering dresses and coats. The next day, I called Lefranc-Ferrant to ask how one could buy a marvelous gray wool dress that had walked the runway. They directed me to the Emmy Franck boutique on the rue St. Honoré. And there it was, in several sizes, priced at €1,040, or about $1,400. Ms. Franck herself helped me try it on.
But of course, what with the pre-made sizes and all, it wasn't haute couture.
"It doesn't matter. We know it's ready-to-wear," Didier Grumbach said with a shrug. The president of the French couture federation -- France's fashion police -- is allowing designers to break all the rules that have traditionally separated haute couture from ready-to-wear clothing, which is produced in quantity and sold off the rack. Then he got down to brass capitalism, explaining why.
Paris is, at this time of year, full of the world's retail buyers, placing orders for ready-to-wear clothing to fill stores next spring. Also, the fall ready-to-wear collections are just arriving at Paris shops. These stores are selling their summer fare in semiannual sales. What a splendid time for a fashion convention! "Haute couture becomes a way to animate all the confusion of these other activities," Mr. Grumbach said.
Even if it's not haute couture.
Mr. Grumbach is president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, which guards the rules for how haute couture clothes are made -- completely by hand, from a pattern that is customized to fit the buyer, in a Parisian atelier employing at least 20 seamstresses. The group also controls the pace for the steady march of Paris fashion shows, which in turn dictate the stride of style in New York, London, and Milan.
Today, the few haute couture shows that stick to the rules, more or less, are more theater than fashion. Christian Dior designer John Galliano threw a fete at Versailles, attended by the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Dita Von Teese and Sofia Coppola. Dali-esque shoes, with tall heels melting into their soles, sent models bobbling down the runway like sleek race cars that had lost a wheel. Very entertaining, waiting for the inevitable crashes.
Little wonder that there are so few customers: It takes a remarkable woman to pull off a gown that's four feet wide. Or imitates what Renaissance jesters wore. Giorgio Armani's collection included giant stiff skirts that ballooned like up-ended, tilted brandy snifters. These are clothes made for the press, never to be worn off the runway. A half-dozen well-heeled design houses can't fill a week of shows, though, so more than a dozen less well-known but talented designers are invited each season. These people can't afford to make eccentric collections that won't sell. This season, they include Boudicca, Anne Valerie Hash, Adam Jones, and Gustavo Lins, as well as Lefranc-Ferrant.
Felipe Oliveira Baptista's rail-thin models wore finely knitted T-shirts over slinky skirts with sequined lightning strikes. Mr. Lins showed gray pants, shirts and shoes that would look elegant but not outlandish in my office.
Indeed, true haute couture may be gasping for breath, but these shows are arguably an excellent place to discover agile new designers before they're bought up by the luxury conglomerates.
Still, some in the fashion world feel it's time to recognize that the haute couture show calendar is being fleshed out with ready-to-wear. Mr. Grumbach "fills the schedule just to fill it," said Concetta Lanciaux, an adviser to LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault.
Monsieur Grumbach is unworried. "Gradually, these things fade," he said. "The difference between haute couture and ready-to-wear..." Another shrug. "Chanel and Dior can be the mythical couturiers. [But] they live because of the ready-to-wear."
That doesn't mean the idea of haute couture can't be useful -- at least for the press releases. "Couture is a way to give freedom for a designer. It allows a house to present designs which are a dream. Ready-to-wear is reality," Mr. Grumbach continued, making the racks of $1,500 prêt-à-porter dresses at Vuitton and Bottega Veneta sound dreary.
But these designers use their haute couture shows much as they use the red carpets of Hollywood -- to showcase their ready-to-wear clothes. The much-photographed starlet Camille Belle attended the Armani haute couture show last week in an Armani ready-to-wear dress with a black patent bodice and black-and-white shirt. The dress appeared next day in the window of the Armani shop on Avenue Montaigne.
Decades ago, the best-dressed ladies went to the salons of Yves St. Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro and Coco Chanel twice a year to choose that season's wardrobe. Multiple fittings resulted in a perfect fit, with none of the bulging buttons of ready-to-wear clothing. Dozens of designers considered to have the haute couture "savoir faire" were voted into the couture federation.
After World War II, European factories followed America's lead and began churning out prêt-a-porter. Mass production was far more profitable. These days, the French haute-couture federation has only 10 members -- and four of them, including Emanuel Ungaro, didn't show this season. In another decade, predicts Pamela Golbin, curator of the Louvre museum's Musée de la Mode et du Textile, no true haute couture members will remain. Instead, she suggests designers like Azzedine Alaïa will produce high-quality clothes for good customers from outside the expensive haute couture system.
Today, designers Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and Vanessa Seward of Azzaro all have the haute couture "savior faire," Mr. Grumbach said, wishing they would apply to join the federation. "We are snobbish -- they must ask," he noted. The only designer whom Mr. Grumbach has invited without a request is Giorgio Armani, he said. It was a bid to boost the fashion week by getting Mr. Armani to show in Paris rather than Milan.
Azzaro's chief executive, Nathalie Franson, told me she has no intention of requesting haute couture status. The idea is to make high-margin shoes and accessories in addition to Azzaro's famously draped ready-to-wear dresses. Global expansion, not savoir faire.
By Christina Binkley
At the semiannual haute couture shows last week in Paris, I was curious to learn about this exacting craft, which we are told caters to the 200 or so women in the world who buy hand-sewn, completely made-to-order dresses costing as much as a small house in Kansas City.
I attended the haute couture show of Lefranc-Ferrant, a pair of talented new designers who showed finely executed, flattering dresses and coats. The next day, I called Lefranc-Ferrant to ask how one could buy a marvelous gray wool dress that had walked the runway. They directed me to the Emmy Franck boutique on the rue St. Honoré. And there it was, in several sizes, priced at €1,040, or about $1,400. Ms. Franck herself helped me try it on.
But of course, what with the pre-made sizes and all, it wasn't haute couture.
"It doesn't matter. We know it's ready-to-wear," Didier Grumbach said with a shrug. The president of the French couture federation -- France's fashion police -- is allowing designers to break all the rules that have traditionally separated haute couture from ready-to-wear clothing, which is produced in quantity and sold off the rack. Then he got down to brass capitalism, explaining why.
Paris is, at this time of year, full of the world's retail buyers, placing orders for ready-to-wear clothing to fill stores next spring. Also, the fall ready-to-wear collections are just arriving at Paris shops. These stores are selling their summer fare in semiannual sales. What a splendid time for a fashion convention! "Haute couture becomes a way to animate all the confusion of these other activities," Mr. Grumbach said.
Even if it's not haute couture.
Mr. Grumbach is president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, which guards the rules for how haute couture clothes are made -- completely by hand, from a pattern that is customized to fit the buyer, in a Parisian atelier employing at least 20 seamstresses. The group also controls the pace for the steady march of Paris fashion shows, which in turn dictate the stride of style in New York, London, and Milan.
Today, the few haute couture shows that stick to the rules, more or less, are more theater than fashion. Christian Dior designer John Galliano threw a fete at Versailles, attended by the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Dita Von Teese and Sofia Coppola. Dali-esque shoes, with tall heels melting into their soles, sent models bobbling down the runway like sleek race cars that had lost a wheel. Very entertaining, waiting for the inevitable crashes.
Little wonder that there are so few customers: It takes a remarkable woman to pull off a gown that's four feet wide. Or imitates what Renaissance jesters wore. Giorgio Armani's collection included giant stiff skirts that ballooned like up-ended, tilted brandy snifters. These are clothes made for the press, never to be worn off the runway. A half-dozen well-heeled design houses can't fill a week of shows, though, so more than a dozen less well-known but talented designers are invited each season. These people can't afford to make eccentric collections that won't sell. This season, they include Boudicca, Anne Valerie Hash, Adam Jones, and Gustavo Lins, as well as Lefranc-Ferrant.
Felipe Oliveira Baptista's rail-thin models wore finely knitted T-shirts over slinky skirts with sequined lightning strikes. Mr. Lins showed gray pants, shirts and shoes that would look elegant but not outlandish in my office.
Indeed, true haute couture may be gasping for breath, but these shows are arguably an excellent place to discover agile new designers before they're bought up by the luxury conglomerates.
Still, some in the fashion world feel it's time to recognize that the haute couture show calendar is being fleshed out with ready-to-wear. Mr. Grumbach "fills the schedule just to fill it," said Concetta Lanciaux, an adviser to LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault.
Monsieur Grumbach is unworried. "Gradually, these things fade," he said. "The difference between haute couture and ready-to-wear..." Another shrug. "Chanel and Dior can be the mythical couturiers. [But] they live because of the ready-to-wear."
That doesn't mean the idea of haute couture can't be useful -- at least for the press releases. "Couture is a way to give freedom for a designer. It allows a house to present designs which are a dream. Ready-to-wear is reality," Mr. Grumbach continued, making the racks of $1,500 prêt-à-porter dresses at Vuitton and Bottega Veneta sound dreary.
But these designers use their haute couture shows much as they use the red carpets of Hollywood -- to showcase their ready-to-wear clothes. The much-photographed starlet Camille Belle attended the Armani haute couture show last week in an Armani ready-to-wear dress with a black patent bodice and black-and-white shirt. The dress appeared next day in the window of the Armani shop on Avenue Montaigne.
Decades ago, the best-dressed ladies went to the salons of Yves St. Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro and Coco Chanel twice a year to choose that season's wardrobe. Multiple fittings resulted in a perfect fit, with none of the bulging buttons of ready-to-wear clothing. Dozens of designers considered to have the haute couture "savoir faire" were voted into the couture federation.
After World War II, European factories followed America's lead and began churning out prêt-a-porter. Mass production was far more profitable. These days, the French haute-couture federation has only 10 members -- and four of them, including Emanuel Ungaro, didn't show this season. In another decade, predicts Pamela Golbin, curator of the Louvre museum's Musée de la Mode et du Textile, no true haute couture members will remain. Instead, she suggests designers like Azzedine Alaïa will produce high-quality clothes for good customers from outside the expensive haute couture system.
Today, designers Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and Vanessa Seward of Azzaro all have the haute couture "savior faire," Mr. Grumbach said, wishing they would apply to join the federation. "We are snobbish -- they must ask," he noted. The only designer whom Mr. Grumbach has invited without a request is Giorgio Armani, he said. It was a bid to boost the fashion week by getting Mr. Armani to show in Paris rather than Milan.
Azzaro's chief executive, Nathalie Franson, told me she has no intention of requesting haute couture status. The idea is to make high-margin shoes and accessories in addition to Azzaro's famously draped ready-to-wear dresses. Global expansion, not savoir faire.
