Hi everyone, it's Justine. You might know the difference between Haute Couture and Prêt-à-Porter (or Ready to Wear) already
but how they both appeared and now
co-exist is an interesting story.
How do they actually work - Couture and Ready to Wear, Which fashion houses do it, When is Fashion Week For Haute Couture
...etc. Paris as a fashion city has played a huge role in the development of the fashion industry
So it is where the story starts.
From clothes to Haute Couture.
Before the Industrial Revolution,
Queens and rich people from the court would have their garments tailor made for them.
This is Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
Each piece was unique: the tailors had no inventory.
This is how clothes had been made for many, many centuries.
Couture in French simply means sewing. Nothing more. Couturier is the person who sews. Nothing fancy.
Couturiers were suppliers. They weren't celebrities, and they certainly were not invited to the parties
they were dressing people for.
Then came the 20th century
Some Paris-based houses became internationally famous: like Chanel,
Schiaparelli,
Patou or Vionnet.
They attracted the world's bourgeoisie
and they started to create very rich clothes that their clients could show up in.
And couture progressively became 'haute couture'.
Designers wanted to do haute couture, and nothing else. Doing regular, tailor-made clothing
wasn't cool anymore.
And then came Prêt-à-Porter.
By the 1950s and after World War II, people's budgets and priorities had changed I guess. Buying couture clothing was just
not at the top of the wish list anymore and couture houses started to slowly decline.
Their reaction logically was to renew the offer, and
Prêt-à-Porter - Ready-to-Wear - was born. It catered to many more people and
made fashion actually accessible to normal people.
And it made the Haute Couture houses profitable again.
They would sell the dream with couture garments and then sell actual garments,
thanks to their Ready-to-Wear collections. Yves Saint Laurent, when he started his 'Rive Gauche' business
which is Ready-to-Wear had this exact strategy in mind.
At that time couture garments and ready-to-wear garments didn't look that different yet.
Here are two of his creations from the 60s.
The Savion Safari jacket for women
this is ready to wear, and the cocktail dress inspired by Mondrian, the painter. The dress needed more work,
and it's better fabric of course, but in terms of wearability,
it is not over the top.
Both garments are actually functional and wearable.
The "new" Haute Couture in the era of ready-to-wear
Since then ready-to-wear has gained more and more importance in the industry and it now represents most of the sales
for all houses. Haute couture had to adopt and got pushed more and more a lot further they used to be pushed.
Now a Couture collection is your business card. It's what gets you a picture in Vogue. It's the dream.
It's the reason why students go to fashion school and want to become designers. What couture today really means is:
extravagance, huge lengths of fabrics, volume, rare materials, hours of work - nothing is too much.
There are several ways of doing it.
Valentino or Dior will create the perfect Princess Ballgown.
Margiela will go extremely experimental: not always wearable, but that's not the point of it.
Chanel is one of those that remain rather wearable,
but with incredible handcraft, and with a very high price tag.
When they can afford to ignore
the rules of business and profitability and when they have budget to create collections that are
'art' rather than 'design', couture designers produce and show things that really wouldn't be possible in ready-to-wear.
Example: the Clochard collection by Galliano for Dior in 2000.
Clochard means homeless in French. The garments were ripped, had prints of old newspapers on them,
threads hanging here and there and empty whiskey bottles attached.
Obviously the collection was an instant scandal and didn't exactly go down in history as a best-seller among
the haute couture customers.
But if you look at that handcraft from up close, it is really really impressive
Can Haute Couture survive?
Today most fashion houses do ready-to-wear without having ever done haute couture.
And they're still taken seriously, which wasn't the case in the 50s and 60s.
But there are some houses that still do both with success.
The calendar is not an issue
Couture Fashion Week in Paris is in July, Fall for Winter.
Couture means no inventory.
So you can start ordering your couture pieces right after the show.
Then comes the ready-to-wear Fashion Week in September for the following summer. This way
they have time to buy the fabrics, produce and deliver the collection. So couture and ready-to-wear run at different moments in the year.
Chanel is a great example of the house that has kept doing both things with success over time.
Lagerfeld designs both the couture and the ready-to-wear collections. This way
they are absolutely sure that everything has one aesthetics.
And then Chanel has bought several traditional French businesses that have the skills and the experience
needed for couture quality.
So they own the whole supply chain and the knowledge
and the know-how that they now have in-house is beneficial to all their collections.
Embroidery is one of those traditional skills: the Lesage family has been supplying
handmade embroideries to all of the Parisian houses since the 1920s. Now they do the embroideries of the
Chanel Couture wedding gowns.
Shoemaking is another important part in the show
Massaro is the Atelier that has been creating Chanel shoes since the time of Gabrielle Chanel. And now they belong to the house.
Making pleats is another traditional skill. Lognon has been pleating fabric since 1945.
You pinch the fabric between cardboard pieces, you heat, you press everything - it's quite a labor-intensive process as well
I think it's important that this know-how and the ability, the possibility of creating such pretty things doesn't get lost or forgotten.
Haute Couture has changed. It became a
form of art rather than a wearable design.
But that's okay - things change. Haute Couture has changed and its place in the overall fashion industry has changed.
That's it - different story, different era. What do you think about Haute Couture?
Do you agree?
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to watch. I see you very soon again. New videos every Wednesday and Sunday on this channel. Have a great week and take care.
Bye bye!