Key takeaways:
- Although only a handful of Parisian fashion houses still bear the haute couture label, the practice appears both creatively healthy and financially sustainable.
- Couture pieces that retail for upwards of $10,000 look like relative bargains for the wealthiest shoppers at a time when logos are mass and true luxury is expensive.
- For brands like Dior and Dolce & Gabbana, the innovation that goes into designing custom pieces also spills over into ready-to-wear.
What is it about haute couture that makes some folks keep predicting it will die?
“Every 10 years, the doctors assemble at the bedside of French haute couture and announce that death is imminent,” wrote the New York Times in 1965. Yet 54 years later, the business of hand-sewn, custom-made clothing is looking vibrant and strong as the Autumn/Winter 2019 shows debut in Paris on Sunday.
In its 2018 annual report, LVMH highlighted Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri’s highly acclaimed Spring/Summer 2018 haute couture show, an ode to surrealism, as central to the brand’s “remarkable performance”. While revenues are modest relative to its more lucrative beauty and fragrance lines, the house’s haute couture division is profitable in its own right. It sets new trends for ready-to-wear, serves as a research and development department for fabric and technological innovation, and reinforces the brand’s legacy of craftsmanship.
Some of couture’s sheen has been stolen by cruise collection shows, for which brands fly journalists and clients to far-flung places — the South of France, southern California, rural Japan, JFK airport — to see the ready-to-wear collections. But those expenditures are allotted to marketing and not necessarily pushing the craft forward.
Haute couture is one of the rare spaces in designer fashion that stays in touch with the lives and needs of its consumers, who spend from $10,000 to $1 million or more on an outfit and crave the luxury of personalisation at a time when logos are mass. While Gucci churns out $870 sneakers and $4,200 jogging jackets with extraordinary profit margins, some high-spending clients are beginning to look at haute couture as more bang for their buck.
“The prices of ready-to-wear gowns are so staggeringly high that the margin between ready-to-wear and haute couture isn’t that wide anymore,” says Ulla Parker, a client and frequent fixture at haute couture shows who arrived in Paris this week. Recalling an $18,000 price tag on a prêt-a-porter piece during a recent shopping expedition, she says, “Why would I do this?”
Parker, who uses terms like “amortisation” to calculate that her haute couture apparel is often a better-valued expenditure over time, doesn’t ascribe to the wear-only-once philosophy. “A lot of my wardrobe has been built over decades,” she says, recalling a favourite John Galliano for Christian Dior look she bought 12 years ago.
Her rationalisation is not unusual among the estimated 4,000 haute couture clients around the world, which include Queen Rania of Jordan as well as Debra Lee, former chairwoman of Black Entertainment Television. Lee has told me she treats couture as a practical tool since it gives her powerful clothing to appear in public appearances professionally. There is an industry of haute couture personal shoppers like Fay Ricotta, who are in constant search for clothing that fits their wealthy clients and won’t find a twin.
Couture is varied in its business models. The designers presenting in Paris this week range from established ateliers that have been stitching fantastical gowns for generations, to small-house specialists such as Alexis Mabille and Stephane Rolland, who lack significant advertising budgets but have regular rosters of international clients. There are also brands for whom the conceptual-fashion practice borders on pure art.
“It’s a laboratory. It’s a place where you can be free in terms of there’s no commerciality,” says Viktor Horsting, co-designer of Viktor & Rolf. The brand’s licensed fragrances, though, are what make the couture possible. “Obviously, that allows us to do this,” says Horsting, whose designs will show on Wednesday. “The couture is like a showcase for the brand — for the fragrances.”
The variety of strategies suggests that haute couture is rich with possibilities — offering a more defined audience and an obvious elite distinction for designers. The opportunity is largely due to the prowess of France’s Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Couture’s organising body has selectively expanded the craft and created buzz. Givenchy, having re-entered the haute couture business with designer Clare Waight Keller last year, will show on Tuesday. There is also much speculation around when Hedi Slimane will debut the Celine couture collection that LVMH announced along with his appointment.
The Fédération has also reinvigorated its biannual calendar by inviting guest members, which in turn has built buzz and attracted clients. The guest designers this season include Ulyana Sergeenko and Ralph & Russo, who don’t quite meet all the labyrinthine qualifications — based in Paris, employing at least 15 artisans, etc. — but who showed a proclivity to push fashion forward by strides.
“What we perceive on our side is the growing number of brands who [wish to be] candidates to join the schedule — which is a sign of good health of the market,” says Ralph Toledano, president of the Fédération.
For those who continue to doubt a business model based on the 0.1 per cent, it might be best to look outside of France’s closely regulated designation. The practice of hand-made custom women’s wear may have no more successful example than Dolce & Gabbana’s Alta Moda — Italian for “haute couture”. The label sparked a publicity debacle last year before an Alta Moda show in China. But while East Asian department stores and many Chinese ready-to-wear and cosmetics customers pulled back, the house’s Alta Moda clients showed no inclination to move on.
The cater-to-customer model has been so powerful for the Milan-based brand that it has become central to its business strategy since dropping its lower-priced D&G line and launching Alta Moda in 2012. “Not everyone at that time understood our choice; for many, it was a gamble. But we felt it was right,” Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana say in a joint email. “At that time, there were many signs of change, and we perceived them… we started this journey of absolute creative freedom following our instinct, passion and hearts.”
Some Alta Moda clients, once hooked on the made-to-order approach, quickly started ordering off-menu, requesting pyjamas and day wear.
Working closely with the customers who wear their designs has informed the designers’ approach to ready to wear. Dolce & Gabbana recently announced it will make its famously curvaceous clothes in larger sizes — up to an Italian size 54, or a US size 18.
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