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Bigger, bolder and brighter
Haute couture fashion week starts in Paris today showcasing designers' most luxurious fantasies and dreams.
- By Natalie Long, Deputy tabloid! Editor
- Published: 22:53 July 5, 2009
- Image Credit: Supplied photo
- Haute couture fashion week starts in Paris, showcasing designers' most luxurious fantasies and dreams.
Oe of the most celebrated and simultaneously misunderstood events in fashion begins today in Paris, when a handful of rigorously-selected designers present their haute couture collections.
Here in the Gulf, the term is bandied about in an easy manner - with seemingly every designer at the recent Dubai Fashion Week claiming to have an haute couture line in addition to their ready-to-wear collections.
Would those collections meet the strict standards of the Fédération française de la couture, which has only 11 members in its haute couture family, with a dozen other "guests"?
That's not to disparage our local brethren. But couture is an exclusive club - "elitist" says John Galliano, who, as the designer for Christian Dior, has redefined modern couture _ and for good reason.
That club has been ruled with an iron fist by the Federation for generations, and it's been ruled that way because couture is something worth protecting, like the rainforest or the method for making Champagne.
Once lost - or worse, commercialised - it is irretrievable. The people who make couture have to be supported - and defended from imitators.
"Haute couture is the undiluted melting pot for all new ideas, innovations and new directions that fashion and luxury industry can explore," Galliano told tabloid! by email.
"It is the fine art of the fashion world. It is the difference between fine and costume jewellery, eau de parfum or eau de toilette. Both are innovative and relevant, and both have their audience."
To begin with, couture (the French word for "sewing") refers to something made entirely by hand, to an extraordinarily high standard (the "haute").
When you're paying $100,000 (Dh367,300) for a dress, it shouldn't come apart at the seams; beyond that, the silk should be of the highest quality, the lace should be delicate and unique, the pleating and pin tucks executed with the uniform precision that only the hands and eyes of a professional with decades of experience can perform.
Karl Lagerfeld's couture collections for Chanel routinely pay homage to the women squirrelled away in Parisian garrets - known as the "petits mains" (little hands) - making this possible.
Each presentation highlights some technique or profession that survives thanks to couture: hat-making, lace or thousands of tiny black pearls individually sewn on a dress shimmering like caviar.
What lifts couture to the next level is its innovation. The techniques are ancient, and yet constantly updated, as when Lagerfeld installed Japanese hairstylist Katsuya Kamo in his atelier last year to create 65 paper headpieces for his spring 2009 couture collection.
Lagerfeld told reporters after that presentation in January this year that the paper represented "a white page, a starting point". Couture "is as fragile as it is supposed to refined. It's not bling bling."
Giorgio Armani, who started his couture line, Armani Prive, in 2005, agrees that couture doesn't have to mean bling.
"For some designers couture is about costume and theatre," he told tabloid! "But not for me. I am creating this collection in a very thoughtful and pragmatic way with the focus on offering a special, personalised service to a very specific client"
Some couture may not be bling bling, but all couture is a fantasy, some more far-fetched than others. It is as defined by its ostentation as by its quality.
Everything is minutely detailed, yet bigger, bolder, brighter, crazier - you may not wear it on the street, but it's a chance for designers to live their wildest dreams - without having to think about the financial consequences.
Even the recession can't dim those dreams. Galliano, for one, says he will be more precise in his revelry than ever.
"The economic situation makes you focus even more on the cut, the quality and the collection we produce. Now is the time for excellence and to excel."
Lagerfeld is also relishing the challenge, saying that the recession provided a much-needed "correction" in the industry. It's "very good, very healthy," he said of the crisis after his last couture show in January.
"People have to take away bad habits. It's a new direction."
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