Dreamwear
French haute couture, that institution of handmade high fashion and even higher prices, has had more near-death experiences than that of a soap opera star.
It’s clearly not dead, judging from the sublime displays of design and craftsmanship that came down 26 runways in Paris this week. But as an institution, it has changed. At best, the couture collections are examples of high art; at worst, they’re money-losing businesses that exist to mollify egos of buyers and sellers alike.
A new debate about the future of the 134-year-old institution mesmerized fashion this week when one of its most important members, Yves Saint Laurent, retired with a touching retrospective of his 40-year career. His longtime business partner, Pierre Berge, sparked the heated controversy earlier this month when he declared , “I believe absolutely in the end of haute couture. This way of life no longer exists.” Saint Laurent’s departure leaves only 11 full-fledged members in the couture ranks.
Couture is many things--exclusive, excessive and exquisite. Often called the laboratory of fashion, it exists as one of the industry’s most extraordinary contradictions. By reverently adhering to time-consuming and often antiquated construction methods, its practitioners guarantee the future of the art form. Yet as it strives to be artistic, the clothes can become increasingly out of touch with clients’ needs.
When the creative minds of designers no longer find a value in elaborate embroidery, sumptuous fabrics or clothes cut and tailored for an individual client, then couture’s traditions and hope for a future will vanish.
“The purpose of couture is the search for the best in quality workmanship, in construction and in fabric,” said Kalman Ruttenstein, senior vice president for fashion direction at Bloomingdale’s, who attended this week’s shows. “It’s the top of the line in design as well.”
French couture remains the world’s most prestigious clothing enterprise partly because it comes with a long history that includes dressing an international array of royalty. Parisian haute couture was founded in 1868 as an outgrowth of medieval guilds which regulated the operations of the city’s couturiers, including the influential Charles Frederick Worth, who was the first to sell designs that were copied in the United States. Nearly 100 years after it began, however, couture started to lose ground to ready-to-wear as designers, including Saint Laurent, shifted their emphasis to the less expensive collections beginning in the 1970s.
Despite periodic predictions of its demise, couture perseveres. It remains as designers’ only purely artistic exercise because it allows them to create without the pressure of commercial constraints--broad acceptance and, often, profitability. Saint Laurent’s couture house reportedly lost $11 million a year. Though the collections may not support themselves from the sales of a few dozen ensembles that sell from $25,000 to $100,000 each, executives believe couture is the gem that shines glamour, prestige and distinction on the profitable parts of the brand--fragrance, cosmetics, jeans and ready-to-wear.
The twice-yearly couture presentations used to guarantee a respite from the crass commercialism and circus atmosphere that has turned the ready-to-wear shows into a bizarre form of entertainment. Yet during the recent four-day round of couture, that feeling was obscured by new kinds of mayhem, which included protesters from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who interrupted three of the spring (and furless) shows.
Long-absent superstar models such as Carla Bruni and Ines de la Fressange, returned to the catwalks and shared headlines with an ever-odder fleet of celebrity guests. This season’s bold-type names included Chelsea Clinton, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Madonna, Sheryl Crow and a ubiquitous Gwyneth Paltrow, who was providing a celebrity-eye-view of the collections for a future In Style magazine piece.
“It’s good PR for the designers and the stars,” said James Galanos, a retired Los Angeles couture designer who shared customers with many of Europe’s top names.
“It’s all show. The taste is not there,” he said, noting that couture’s traditional customers still want what it can offer. “They don’t give up that lifestyle. They are crying that they can’t find clothes in the retail stores. That is why they go back to the couture. Everything else is geared to a 20-year-old.”
They’ll pay dearly for the privilege of dressing elegantly. “I have a friend who spent $45,000 for a suit,” Galanos said. “She ordered a pair of pants to match, and they charged her $30,000.” A simple suit can cost $25,000, while elaborately embroidered evening gowns can cost $75,000 to more than $200,000.
At those prices, it’s no wonder that only an estimated 3,000 women in the world have the money or inclination to buy the handmade clothes. In reality, some fashion houses suggest that the number of clients who routinely buy a couture wardrobe totals only 70 to 500. Though the garments are still expertly made, the cost and the less reverent atmosphere discouraged longtime client and socialite Betsey Bloomingdale to stop attending the shows nearly five years ago.
“What you see on the runway is for the publicity of it,” said Bloomingdale from her Bel Air home. “I used to buy the couture, then it became just too far-out and expensive. I used to buy a whole wardrobe ... of wonderful clothes that I can keep and wear again. Today, I don’t know where the designers are going.”
Ruttenstein, who has attended Paris shows since the late ‘60s, has witnessed significant changes in how couture influences fashion and maintains that couture’s real value is in creating “an excitement and an energy that basically helps sell the ready-to-wear.” In theory, couture is supposed to set the direction for the next season’s ready-to-wear collections, he said, “but that isn’t the reality. Sometimes, ideas begin in the ready-to-wear and they travel up to couture.”
The lines between the two levels of fashion have been blurring since Saint Laurent gave ordinary clothes such as trench coats and safari jackets couture interpretations. Younger designers, such as Dior’s John Galliano, increasingly look to the street for inspiration in all of their collections. Few question that Saint Laurent created the modern wardrobe for 20th century women, but life is proceeding at a different pace in the 21st. If modern couture’s unbridled imagination seems irrelevant, it nevertheless remains inspiring to new and seasoned designers alike.
After all, the Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf made their names in couture, as did Josephus Thimister, though both decamped to more profitable ready-to-wear. Rumors are rife that Alexander McQueen and Gianfranco Ferre will seek to rejoin the esteemed ranks of couture, a move that would elevate the contributions of the designers. Couture clothing may look wildly overdecorated and impractical, but if it didn’t, fashion would lose an important outlet for dreams.
“What you see in couture is creativity--creativity that all the others take from, like it or not,” Galanos said. “Granted, sometimes ready-to-wear looks better because we are tuned to a simpler kind of look. That’s part of the American look, which is clean and less fussy. It can be a little dull.”
And if anything is past its prime in fashion, it’s being dull.
“Couture has changed,” Galanos said. “And maybe for the better. We can’t all be there forever. Times changed and the way we look at clothing is different. But there will always be a couture.”
