I've never been the type of girl you have to SELL couture to. I mean, yes, i see that economically the world may not be in the best shape, but that doesn't mean that extravagance does not serve it's purpose. Haute Couture is the height of extravagance, the frou, the frills, the buttercream frosting. I love it all, i even used the documentary 'the secret world of haute couture' as one of my related texts for my english HSC (topic: telling the truth).
It was in that documentary that the CEO of Dior - Sidney Toledano - summed up the purpose of couture. Questioned by the documentary director about the costs, the extravagance, the money spent on the staging of the shows alone, let along the clothes themselves, the fact that the return was so low with so few customers wearing couture nowadays, Toledano responded saying that Couture was about formulating the image. Couture conjures up the iconography and the atmosphere of the brand - Couture is the imaginary playground of designers and the stuff of dreams for the average person. He said that if one person went out and bought a Dior lipstick after seeing a Couture show it would all be worth it. Couture shows are about the wider return - the fact that Dior itself, as a name, as a brand, as a fashion house, is manufactured through the sheer opulence of couture shows, and not just the couture clothes themselves.
This is the relevance of couture today. Couture is the cornerstone of a fashion house's credibility and reputation. To be able to produce couture is a mark of respect in and of itself, but further than that is the purpose that Couture serves. The power of brands like Chanel, Dior and Armani was forged through their reliance upon couture. Their very position in the world of luxury also comes from couture. It is not wise to believe it as only important for the wealthy wives of Sheiks, Aristocracy and merchant bankers. Couture is so much more than that.
Chanel Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2010
style.comLike I said, Haute Couture is about extravagance, showing off (how can it not be when one dress alone can require upwards of thousands of hours of handiwork by artisanal Parisienne seamstresses) and maintaining, updating and elaborating on the legacy of the brand. Chanel's Spring collection was all of these things.
It wasn't quite the revelation that the spring 09 collection was, remember all of Karl's quite poetic meditations upon paper with the white dresses and laser cutaways and those gorgeous head pieces? But this collection was everything we come to expect from Karl - sharp, fully realised and beautifully rendered. This season he was drawn away from black and navy, creating a whole collection in whites, silvers and pastels - even the tights were a sheeny grey.
The show opened with a series of Chanel boucle jackets in various silhouettes paired with matching culottes - Karl's twist on the typical Chanel suit. It was fresh and modern without seeming futuristic, and charming in a way that has come to be associated with Chanel. Lagerfeld then moves seamlessly into the evening wear - dozens of jaw-droppingly embellished cocktail dresses and shrugs for the haute couture VIP customer set, and then a raft of rippling silk floor length numbers that are sure to pop up on Diane Kruger's lithe body for the Oscars. All of the dresses in creamy berthillon shades and finished with the supreme skill of the chanel haute couturier.
It was pretty and sweet. Even that heart shaped hair never tipped it into the 'too sweet' range. It's all going to look great in a Grace Coddington editorial. It is part of the Elbaz Lanvin school of extravagance - more is more, more jewellery, more shine, more embellishment - the evening dresses bedazzled with bejewelled collars and straps. There was a take on the strong shoulder - still looming ever present, yet subtler and cleaner, the arms of a dress extended long, like a Chinese traditional dress, and the bodice was glistening with sequins above the flouncy full skirt.
Beauty and luxury and all things divine - that's what Couture is. And, if you think about it, that's what Chanel is. That the two are indistinguishable is a mark of how powerful Lagerfeld is as a designer and how well he understands couture. This collection had couture written all over it from the Daphne Guinness-esque hair (and no-one does couture better than daphne herself) to the gloriously over the top feathered skirts that were probably the work of 10 seamstresses working full time for a month, backs bent and eyes squinting as they laced feather after feather into the gown.
So beautiful, so luxurious and so divine. It makes one proud to be a woman, no?
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