Oh good.
Regards, Ivan
Posted on 07/05/2004 10:31:26 PM PDT by MadIvan
THE models were all confidence and poise as they sashayed down the Paris catwalks last night for the first of this season’s haute couture shows. But nobody could disguise the sense of gloom hanging over the French art form which appears to be dying on its feet.
In the past 15 years, the number of haute couture shows has fallen dramatically. In 1987, 24 haute couture houses presented their collections. This year only nine remain to parade their collections - Christian Dior, Chanel, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Dominique Sirop, Torrente, Hanae Mori and the Italian designer Valentino.
In the past decade, big names such as Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Louis Feraud, Lanvin and Nina Ricci have stopped making haute couture.
This summer, for the first time, French label Emmanuel Ungaro and Italian designer Versace announced they had closed down their couture workshops to concentrate on ready-to-wear lines. Heavyweight Balmain, in delicate financial circumstances, is also absent from the shows while Givenchy, currently without a designer after the departure of Julien MacDonald, will show to clients, but not journalists. This season will also be the last for Japanese couturier Hanae Mori, a rare foreigner in the couture ranks, who is retiring at the age of 78 after 50 years in fashion.
Maintaining a haute couture operation is vastly expensive for a fashion house - the cost of making a couture collection and mounting a show can easily run into millions of pounds.
Unlike prêt-à-porter, where garments are manufactured in multiples, in standard sizes and sold "off the rack", haute couture is always a unique design sold directly to one private client who will attend at least two fittings, so as to have a custom-made version tailored to her specific measurements.
The problem is, the number of remaining haute couture clients is now estimated at about 300 worldwide - mainly the wives of rich businessmen who can afford these fabulously expensive hand-made clothes. A woman’s haute couture suit, for example, might start at £15,000 while an ornate evening gown can cost over £300,000.
French couture houses are now looking at ways of offering clients an exclusive product from which they can still obtain a decent profit margin.
A spokesman for Versace in London said: "Our Atelier hand-made range is only available to private customers and will not be shown as a couture collection. A few special-order evening dresses appear at the end of our ready-to-wear show each season. We cannot say if this arrangement will change."
An Ungaro spokeswoman, Violet Fraser, said: "Mr Ungaro is not showing couture this season and our plans are undecided. We may do a new deluxe ready-to-wear line which would be younger and more relevant, as other houses like Chanel and Gucci already do. A decision will be made in September but Mr Ungaro has not retired."
Chanel, one of the few couture houses making big profits, has already warned it is considering transferring its couture collection from Paris to New York, threatening to end a French tradition dating back to 1858. Although such a move would be an organisational nightmare for the company, it would make good business sense. About 50 per cent of Chanel’s haute couture clients are American and many are reluctant to travel after the terrorist attacks of 11 September.
The threat is one more headache for the Chambre Syndicale which governs the haute couture industry in Paris - an industry France considers vital to its culture.
In an attempt to stop the decline, the Chambre Syndicale has opted for relaxing the rules for producing couture, which stipulate the number of staff required per workshop and a minimum number of outfits per fashion show, among other things.
Sidney Toledano, the president and chief executive of Dior, said it would continue to invest in the industry.
"If haute couture, that Parisian exception, ended, it would be a catastrophe for the artisans but also for the big luxury brands," he said.
Oh good.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Well, they can continue to produce white flags of surrender. There's a big market for them in Spain and amongst the 20 million who paid to watch Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
The good news from France just keeps rolling in :-)
You know, of all the boycott lists published here, no one mentioned boycotting "haute couture". Are the rich folks thumbing their noses at them too???
I've seen the shows. There are no clothes being shown, just ripped up rags...imo, of course.
ROTFLOL!
I have to laugh. ;o)
A few years ago, a couple of friends and I went into Chanel
in San Francisco. The bottom floor is a quick pass through
for tourists to sample, and possibly buy, their perfume.
We had the audacity to venture upstairs, where they
showcase their apparel. We didn't stay long. However, we
noticed people coming out of the woodwork. As we left,
there was a man at the door speaking into his wrist. We heard him
say, "They have left the building." LOL Yeah...like I'm going to do
20 years for lifting one of their vulgar $1,800 belts. ;o)
Thanks for all of your pings. I'm very glad to see you back.
That kind of high-handedness and contempt for ordinary customers is why I would never buy from them even if I did have that much money to burn. There are friends of mine in their thirties and forties who still won't go into certain establishments because of how they were treated there when they were younger and poorer.
Chanel has been the only designer worth looking at lately anyway. The rest of it is...not wearable.
Not by anyone in the real world anyway. And since the average dress size in the US ranges between a 12 and 14, what works on a runway ain't gonna work for them....
Not the rich, the super-rich. That there are only 300 is no great surprise. Think Bill Gates kind of money. I doubt they are thumbing their noses. They're probably just not willing to dish out that kind of cash anymore.
The old Chanel, as designed by Coco herself, was beautiful stuff. Classic lines and form and flattered the female form. The newer stuff doesn't hold a candle to it.
The only way I would ever pay $1800 dollars for a belt is if it had a batarang in it.
So, you were skimming through the morning headlines on FreeRepublic and suddenly came over all esurient at the thought of Brie...but does it have to be french cheese? Why not Venezuelan Beaver Cheese
Karl Lagerfeld is quite creative and has taken the fashion house out of the doldrums, but he has occasionally gone over the top with some of his designs for Chanel, IMHO.
While I'm sure that those 300 clients still spend a fortune on their couture clothes, they can't support 20-30 couture houses. Besides, much of the big-scale fashion show productions were more for the press than the clients. They could do much more modest productions and save tons of money (although the high prices for the clothes are due mainly to the large amount of manual labor - some things just can't be done by machine). In "the old days" the mannequins would show the designs in the fashion houses for the clients. It was very low key.
Of course it doesn't have to be French!
I'm Australian. I've probably eaten genuine French cheese about twice in my lifetime. I was thinking more along the lines of a good King Island Brie (an island in Bass Strait, between the Australian mainland and Tasmania), or maybe even something from New Zealand... New Zealand make some mighty fine cheeses.
Love the article, MadIvan!
So, too, was most of the stuff designed by Yves Saint Laurent. I had posted this article about his retirement.
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