A RARE BREED
Its client numbers may have waned in recent times, but there is still a place for the exquisite wonder of haute couture in today’s world, writes Sarah Harris.
There’s still a place for the exquisite wonder of haute couture in today’s world.
Hubert de Givenchy called it right when he once said that, to him, haute couture means perfection. At a time when everything else is seemingly falling apart – plummeting oil prices, the global economy – there’s always haute couture for escapism. Now more than ever, the expectation of what couture should be – or perhaps more accurately, what you want it to be – is forever whirring, as the shows play out in an uncharacteristically quiet Paris, where taxis are on strike and the effects of last November’s terrorist attacks are still ricocheting through every arrondissement. Surely what we want haute couture to be is modern, of-the-moment clothes as fantastical as they are believable, and so exquisitely engineered, crafted and decorated they make you ache with desire. Then, after they’ve made their debut under the bright lights inside some of Paris’s grandest buildings, we might imagine these pieces floating off, happily ever after into the fabulous lifestyles of the fabulous women who occupy this world.
And they are fabulous. From the Asian clients who sit demurely in pastel taffeta to the Americans, almost always in Chanel suits, to the Russians, swathed in showy grey-tipped sable, carrying tiny Himalayan crocodile Birkins, fingers weighed down with gaudy golfball-sized Colombian emeralds. They peacock up and down the front row to make doubly sure everyone has seen them, leaving nothing but a trail of Guerlain Mitsouko in their wake. And then there’s the Middle Eastern royalty and European aristocracy jostling alongside expensive-looking newcomers from emerging markets such as Brazil. Every one an exotic creature – but she’s a dwindling breed. It’s been estimated that there are 4,000 couture customers in the world, compared with couture’s heyday during the 50s, when some 20,000 clients ordered their wardrobes from these shows. It matters. A drop in attendance does have a ripple effect in the desirability of these clothes. “I noticed substantially fewer wealthy clients this season. And it absolutely affected my perception of the quality of this season’s haute couture,” says Polish couture client Joanna Przetakiewicz.
One glitch is that haute couture hasn’t evolved with the shifting fashion landscape. More and more, much of ready-to-wear now looks like couture, and that’s because the more commercial ideas, which once occupied the ready-to-wear arena, are now filed into the pre-collections. Consequently, ready-to-wear has flexed its
creative muscle and punched out another term to add to the fashion lexicon – “demi-couture” – extravagantly decorated clothes that sit within the realms of ready-to-wear and which are mostly identified by a hefty five-figure price tag … and appliqué. It’s one of the reasons Przetakiewicz didn’t order anything this season. “The experience of having a dress made only for you at an atelier with 100 years of history is truly magical, but lately haute couture has lost its lustre and ready-to-wear has taken some of it for its own gain. Their image gets really close – too close – and I don’t see much sense in spending far larger amounts only because it has a haute couture label on it, despite all the hours that it entailed,” she says with a shrug. Current demi-couture delights include a lovely appliquéd silk organza gown by Valentino for AU$27,985 (the silk petals were painted and applied by hand and took eight seamstresses eight days to complete). Valentino isn’t alone. Gucci currently boasts an emerald plissé silk chiffon ankle-skimmer for AU$27,720, and Dolce & Gabbana is offering a broderie anglaise dress for AU$22,835.
Fashion loves to concoct a new term. From demi-couture to “athleisure” (a category of clothes that you could – if forced – to exercise in, but you choose not to) to “athevening” (athleticlooking eveningwear that, no, you can’t do sports in, but wearing it makes you look like the sporty type). I’m not certain that the worlds of “athevening” and couture should ever collide, but they did at Versace Atelier. The Rio Olympics are almost here, so if ever there were a moment for Donatella Versace to explore the concept of hot suntanned bodies with athletic-looking design, it’s now. She took the baton and ran with it. From stirrup ski pants and sporty jacket combos to sinuous gowns with gaping portholes; so many cut-outs, plunges, slits and slashes, in fact, that were it not for the Swarovski-crystal ropes holding them together they looked like they could slip right off. Of course, that’s all part of the appeal here. You couldn’t do pilates in it, but you’d need a pilates-honed body before you’d even consider wearing “athevening”.
On the topic of unlikely alliances, one might wonder what haute couture has to do with an ecosystem and, in turn, what an ecosystem has to do with a lavish multimillion-dollar production, but at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld persuaded us all otherwise. He transformed the Grand Palais into an energy-efficient zone where a wooden-slatted modernist house, which looked like some kind
THESE WERE CLOTHES INTENDED FOR THE SUPERWEALTHY
of abstinence retreat, was positioned on a sprawling manicured lawn, complete with lily pond and even swarming midges (flown in for the fanfare? Just maybe).
It was a celebration of nature, which brought forward a bucolic springtime wardrobe. The focus was on the Chanel skirt suit, because aside from a few frothy dresses made of tufted shredded cotton (which looked like feathers prized from a day-old chick) I doubt anyone wishes to see anything other than the Chanel suit on a Chanel haute couture runway. Most were midi-length (which Coco Chanel herself would very much approve of; she deemed knees to be the ugliest part of a woman’s body). In keeping with his back-to-nature theme, shaved woodchips were woven into signature bouclé suits, adorned here and there with twinkling bug brooches – a bee, as though to highlight their plight. His calming Zen palette drifted through the entire beige spectrum, from biscuit and putty through to clotted cream and ivory. Not a hint of lilac.
Eighty per cent of the Armani Privé collection was lilac, or a watery shade of mauve. As the week developed, so too did the chalky pastel, popping up at Giambattista Valli, Elie Saab, Gaultier, Dior and Schiaparelli. Trends do emerge at these shows – the haute sneaker was born on these runways, remember. Also sighted: the bomber jacket. It was literally everywhere: at Chanel, blooming in silk petal applique; beaded at Atelier Versace; in orange mink at Gaultier; at Maison Margiela, oversized and disguised beneath what looked like a heap of laundry (albeit brocade laundry). Everywhere. At least the bomber feels à la mode. Regardless of how you feel about powdery lavender (opinions run from pretty to putrid, but it went down very well with three Korean beauties on Armani’s front row, who excitedly snapped their favourite pieces on their iPhones), it’s rarely a colour that’s considered synonymous with modernity.
Neither, you might think, is a bridal gown that a bride can barely walk in, as witnessed at Ralph & Russo, the couture house that two years ago became the first British label to be invited to show at Paris couture week in a century. Isabeli Fontana towing a three-metre train down the runway was like watching a very well-dressed Iron Man challenge. It might as well have been a truck. Turning 180 degrees was also impossible: at least without the assistance of six handlers to lift, manoeuvre and rearrange said train. But no matter; showgoers, including Uma Thurman and Rita Ora, revelled in the spectacle and gasped with glee. The huge numbers that make up the gown must be one of the most impressive sets of statistics of the couture season: 826 metres of tulle and 46 metres of organza (each sleeve comprised 22 metres), more than 50 embroiderers clocked up 6,000 accumulated hours. At time of writing, the gown has garnered “a lot of interest” and a sale is apparently “imminent”. Ralph & Russo is a thriving business: in 2014, the privately held company was valued at an undisclosed nine-figure sum. The Australian-born, London-based design pair Tamara Ralph and Michael Russo has dressed everyone from Angelina Jolie to Beyoncé to Gwyneth Paltrow. “It was sensational,” said a British personal stylist before hurrying after her client to congratulate the designers backstage. “We buy a dozen couture pieces a year,” she continued, highlighting those she’s intending to order here: a petal-strewn ballerina-length ballgown, a silver shawl-collared double satin robe with elegantly tulip-draped skirt, and a belted cobalt blue peplum skirt suit that was more Dior than, well, Dior.
Christian Dior is a house that one might expect to see ruffled, and yet it was resolutely unruffled. Since Raf Simons exited last October, proceedings have been left in the capable hands of an in-house design team, headed up by Swiss studio directors Serge Ruffieux, 42, and Lucie Meier, 33. They worked under Simons’s direction for many years and so his ideas on modernity were still evident – although it was Monsieur Dior himself, and his fixation on “the spontaneous, relaxed Parisienne”, coupled with their own ideas of couture’s new realism, that was said to be the trigger. It worked.
Staged in a mirrored box in the sprawling gardens of the Musée Rodin, the show proved that the Bar jacket – a design that spans eight decades and still looks good – is the gift that keeps on giving. It was reinterpreted several times over, in crisp white, in oversized camel, even extended to a cocktail dress. Elsewhere, fitand-f lare dresses were delightfully askew, tops seemed twisted on torsos, others were casually shrugged off, as though getting dressed was an afterthought rather than the highlight of the day (in a good way). Even sleeves were purposefully pushed up. These were clothes intended for the super-wealthy with a point of view, not the idle rich. Even so, one longstanding Dior couture customer said it wouldn’t be a collection that she orders from. “I liked it,” she considered. “But there’s no value here. I buy couture as an investment and when a house is in limbo it doesn’t feel like somewhere you want to invest large amounts of money. I will wait to see what happens here next season.”
And so to Valentino, where Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri took their cue from the Spanish couturier Mariano Fortuny, and each of the goddess gowns that emerged was more beautifully crafted than the one before.
From velvet togas with antique burnished gold impressions to featherweight tulle, caped gowns and grand kimono-style coats with oriental embroideries and trimmed in mink, it was an astounding feat of craftsmanship. In a word? Perfection.