Welcome to Week 4.
This is Silhouettes.
It’s Coutures.
[LAUGH]
We're going to be talking about coutures this week, and that's coutures with an "s"
very specifically.
And I'm going to ask our resident fashion, historian, and expert to talk about why we're
talking about coutures, and with an "s".
Why is it plural?
What does even couture mean?
So many of us have probably heard the term "couture" applied to different aspects of
fashion.
It is a French word that translates into "dressmaking" or "sewing."
And I'm sure some of us have heard it applied to probably like an expensive piece of fashion,
something that was handmade, or even one of a kind.
And all of those descriptors are in part true, but the word "couture," as it applies to fashion,
really originates in the 19th century with the establishment of the Chambre Syndicale
de la Haute Couture, meaning the couture syndicate.
It was essentially a governing body that was established in order to protect designers
in France from piracy.
It still exists today.
And in order to be considered couture, you have to essentially abide by some very strict
regulations put forth by this body.
Very extensive, but a few examples are you have to have your atelier located in Paris,
every garment needs to be one of a kind and made for a specific client and have multiple
fittings, and most of the garment needs to be handmade.
So that's sort of the technical meaning of couture.
But, you know, the idea of couture, something being handmade, exclusive, taking a lot of
craftsmanship can be applied to many, many fashion items, including humble masterpieces,
which is why we have chosen to call this week coutures with an "s", because we're going
to look at all of the different ways of making fashion items from actual haute couture items
to more humble masterpieces.
So as part of this week, we'll talk about crafting.
And one of the things that we'll talk about, and you'll actually get to see by going into
the studio, is how a bespoke suit is made.
And so our team went to Anderson and Sheppard.
It's a tailor in London.
It's been on Savile Row, a place that really is the heart of suit-making in London, and
actually really worldwide.
It's globally known for its production of suits.
They've been there since the turn of the 20th century.
And you'll see the process, really from the very, very first picking of the materials,
the measuring of somebody's body, very precisely the measuring out.
Then onto paper patterns and then onto fabric, the cutting, the sewing, every single bit
of painstaking labor that goes into creating a suit.
We're then going to look at...
What's our next topic?
Stephanie: We're going to go from crafting to what we're calling producing.
So we're going to look at some examples that perhaps at one point were made by hand, were
made for one person, but due to their rising popularity, have been made in more of a mass
assembly-line manner.
And so a few examples that we're going to look at are the clogs, the Aran sweater, and
then we're going to look at the leather biker jacket.
A lot of us look at the biker jacket and think of it as the garment of the cool kid that
Marlon Brando so famously wore.
But it's actually a wonderful example of a garment that is made very intricately, but
on a bit of a larger scale than perhaps a Panama hat or a suit for one client.
Leather is not like a regular textile, like polyester or cotton.
So it really requires very highly trained craftspeople, who also know how to work fairly
quickly in order to produce more than one a day.
So it's an interesting example of the transition from crafting into producing.
And then we'll also think about growing, actually cultivating as a means to think about couture.
So everything from cultivating pearls to thinking about bio coutures, so the idea of being able
to grow from living cells to other types of living organisms, and making that into something
that's a fashion garment or an accessory, and then also thinking about growing through
3D and 4D printing.
So additive processes like those, the design, things like...
We have actually now a MoMA’s collection, the Kinematics Dress.
We hope you enjoyed this week, and perhaps you'll look at your clothes a little differently
now that you know how they're made.