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Mannikin
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With the Couture season fast approaching, I thought it would be proper to give everyone a crash-course on Couture. Enjoy!
Haute couture was invented there at the end of the 19th century and has felt most at home there ever since. Paris, whose influence in the world of fashion may even go as far back as the court of Louis XIV, still ranks as the capital of haute couture, with its crafts and its almost legendary fashion houses of international renown, its extravagances and its unique savoir faire. As the proving ground for design and research, Paris continues to inspire and attract talents from all over the world. Generation after generation, it breathes new life into haute couture, this luxurious and ephemeral art which, undoubtedly, must go on evolving if it is to survive.
Label France invites you to discover the world of French haute couture through its retrospective, portraits, interviews and its special feature. Those who, today as in the past, adorn the models: the embroiderer Lesage; the designer of "barbaric jewels", Robert Goossens; and the young shoe designer, Christian Louboutin; those who, on its fringes, make it move: Jean-Paul Gaultier, Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler; those who buy it and make it live. And finally, bien sûr, the great houses of couture themselves: Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Laroche, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Ungaro, Christian Lacroix, whose collections, thanks to television, are now presented all over the world.
The founder of a refined yet practical style, the great Coco Chanel (1883-1971) was a pioneer of French haute couture. Photographed by Horst in 1937.
Since the great age of Louis XIV and his opulent and extravagant court, France has been the yardstick for fashion. Established in Paris, at the close of the 19th century, haute couture emerged as the confirmation of that supremacy. Today, it remains a French speciality, gratefully borrowing from foreign talents.
With her curls, powdered wig, perfume and ribbons, her crinoline and her lace, her embroidered stockings and her court shoes, the "Doll from the Rue Saint-Honoré" was as eagerly awaited as a crowned head by all and sundry in 18th century Europe. Particularly in prosperous London, where she would land once a month, and in Venice, too, as well as Vienna, St Petersburg and Constantinople, where her visits were more infrequent. The travelling dress stand served to showcase the Paris fashion or, rather, the fashion of the Versailles Court, whose whims and extravagances set the tone in every boudoir. Whence the following quatrain by Abbé Delille:
"Thus sovereign of adornment fair,
France is still queen of fashion's flair,
Bearing to remotest north our tastes diverse,
The despotic doll enslaves the universe."
The products of Parisian workshops and their accessories followed the doll, with a retinue of craftsmen, perfumers, wigmakers and sundry manufacturers of beauty spots, hair pieces and pomades. To the great indignation of local manufacturers and their governments, even of the sovereigns themselves. Indeed, Catherine II, Empress of Russia, promulgated a sumptuary law by declaring war on French fashions.
"The minister of fashion"
Enough to arouse the interest of the British chargé d'affaires, who did not fail to report to London the blow thus dealt to French commerce: "Embroideries and furbelows are banned. Coiffures are not to exceed two and a half inches in height. The enormous growth in the export of fashion articles from France was the prime reason for this reform in ladies' dress," reported Sir James Harris, adding that the tsarina's fury extended also to her daughter-in-law, the grand duchess Maria Feodorovna, "passionately in love with France and her fashions". She had returned from Paris "with two hundred trunks filled with muslin, pom-poms and other toiletries" and was in regular correspondence with Mlle Bertin, a young, highly talented milliner to whom Marie-Antoinette, recently arrived at Versailles to marry the future Louis XVI, had taken a fancy and whom the Parisians nicknamed "the minister of fashion".
Paris's primacy in matters of ladies' fashions was to survive the French cultural hegemony specific to the 18th century and the Revolution. It went on to establish itself during the 19th and 20th centuries with the emergence of haute couture. Foreign attempts to put an end to any such supremacy were certainly not lacking: after the French defeat of 1940, Hitler had the idea of transferring the hub of the fashion world to Vienna and Berlin. It was the couturier Lucien Lelong, then chairman of the Syndical Chamber, who came to Paris's rescue, with the support of Madame Grès. Her fashion house was subsequently closed down by the Germans, who felt she was attaching excessive importance to the colours blue, white and red in her collections. But Lelong did manage to convince Goebbels that a concept as exclusively Parisian as that of haute couture could not be developed anywhere but in Paris.
After the War, American companies went on to resist Parisian designers, with the idea of putting an end, once and for all, to their dominance. In vain, as was seen in 1947 when Dior established his new look- only the name was American - with the midi skirt. Given the size of the markets they could open or close to Parisians as they saw fit, the Americans made up for lost ground. But why did a line have to be launched by Paris in order to establish itself in the United States? Even today, in spite of their massive power and the strength of their ready-to-wear, indignant Americans still openly ask themselves that very question.
If Paris has managed to preserve its status as master of haute couture to this very day, it is because of its ability, among others, to provide opportunities to talents from abroad. In this respect, the first and most famous was a Briton, Charles Frédéric Worth, who left London for Paris in 1846. Initially, he worked in the cloth trade, cutting dresses for his wife Marie, before setting up his own business, in 1858, at 7, rue de la Paix, not far from the Opera.
Haute couture: Worth inventing
Worth hit upon the idea of presenting his designs to his clients - first and foremost among them, the Princess of Metternich and the Empress Eugénie - by getting real models to wear them. Thus came about the fashion parade, today inseparable even from the very idea of a collection. It is also to Charles Frédéric, and later to his son, Gaston, that we owe the organisation of the Syndical Chamber for Parisian Fashion. This body stipulates which criteria, among others, make a designer a "couturier", the seasonal calendar for the collections and the registration of dresses on a file, complete with a sketch of the model and a sample of its fabric.
The ups and downs of history could not impede the rise of Parisian haute couture: after the ostentatious displays of the Second Empire came the heyday of the Republic and the Belle Epoque, preceding the Roaring Twenties between the two world wars. Worth and his two sons were followed by Paul Poiret, who declared war on the corset and redesigned ladies' fashions by simplifying the line. Ankles first emerged in 1915. When would the knee appear? Soon, the increasingly sporting line would erase bustlines and other curves.
In the space of a single generation, the world of couture had become organised and well established in a setting of luxury and perfection, bustling with the coming and going of crowned heads and stars: all the trappings you need to seduce clients prepared to pay as much for their clothes as for a racing car while making the dreams of middle-class housewives and midinettes.
A fashion house is first and foremost a hierarchy of tasks orchestrated with the discipline of a ballet company: at the bottom of the ladder are the "arpettes" or apprentices, who pin the fabrics and run from floor to floor. Next in line are qualified chief assistants, second assistants, fitters, chief and assistant sales staff At the top of the pyramid is the designer. He is the great couturier and, in French, is always referred to by a masculine gender, regardless of whether the position is held by a man or a woman, with Madeleine Vionnet, Mme Grès, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli competing with Balenciaga, Lelong, who trained Dior, and Jacques Fath, who opened during the war. Finally, alongside the designer and leading light, the director, who has authority over the entire set-up.
The key to success is the right blend of artistic temperament and business sense. "Am I a fool to dream of putting art into my dresses?" Poiret once asked. Not to mention Dior, who wanted to be an architect and was director of two art galleries: "I think of my work as ephemeral architecture". Mme Grès was a musician and sculptress; Chanel was very close to Colette, Stravinsky and Balanchine But a fashion house also requires a sound financial foundation: Dior supported by Boussac, the textile magnate; Saint-Laurent backed by Pierre Bergé.
The final and perhaps most fascinating aspect of this unique activity is the perpetual state of stand-by, with the designer and his machine permanently monitoring life and events throughout the world in order to avoid the risk of being swept along with the flow or left stranded on the shore. From the new look to mini skirts, tailored dresses to trousers, stiletto heels to flat casuals, from Poiret to Chanel, Dior, Saint-Laurent, Courrèges and Paco Rabanne, haute couture has registered all the tremors of the century, the changes in the condition of woman, of course, but also the poverty of wars, the nostalgia of periods of plenty, the discovery of space, new materials, the general appetite for freedom...
The world is changing and haute couture is changing with it. The whirlwind of mass consumption, a world economy and the revolution of ready-to-wear have all come and gone. When Balenciaga closed down, in 1968, many felt it was the last note of a swan song predicted for a redundant form of luxury. "Haute couture is dying! Haute couture is dead!" "Long live haute couture," chorused the magazines. Back at Avenue Montaigne, "boutiques" steady the "houses" and the "stylists", the "great" couturiers of the past, to serve as a more powerful, more resistant driving force for designer ready-to-wear. For as long as there are women...
Jean-Louis Arnaud