haute couture

The French word ‘couture’ represents needlework or sewing. The couture designer uses a toile, made in muslin or fine linen, from which the made-to-measure proportions were devised. France has a union called the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture with rules and regulations for how couture houses are to be staffed and when they exhibit their lines.

I recall reading in The Fashion Conspiracy that the absolute “prize” element of a couture garment was that it would be made from scratch for a client, require fittings so that her measurements were exactly determined, and would usually have an entire under-body created to support the exterior design in fabric. A couture client often has to endure numerous fittings in the shop, or in her hotel room, should she have flown to Paris for her shopping.

In this respect, the couture wearer is clad in a one-off; no one else will have a garment quite like hers, and she earns its uniqueness by enduring the labor-intensive work that allows her to become the item’s possessor. No wonder, then, that fashion designers of the later twentieth century needed to launch ready-to-wear labels or “brands” in order to make their fortunes. Therefore, haute couture is the idealization, the bespoke aspect of fashion culture. The entire fashion industry is built around delivering the (delusional) dream of a unique garment for its wearers. Only real, existing haute couture provides that dream, however.

And for my favorite way to peek in at Parisian fashion, especially the recent shows, go to www.pretparis.com.

Jacques Doucet, grandson of the founder of the House of Doucet in Paris, was a spirited champion of the new Art Deco style. Doucet was a remarkable art connoisseur and collector of eighteenth century and contemporary French arts. By the time he became active in the firm, around 1874, his encyclopedic knowledge of historic dress expressed itself in fashion references in couture garments. Although in the 1920s he was aging and his couture house merged with another lesser firm, and eventually closed, he never lost touch with foreseeing the needs of the French luxury goods market.

Doucet’s championing of the emerging Art Deco style was manifested in his support for artists working in that mode, like the bookbinder Pierre Legraine. Yet he remains better known as an exponent of the “opulent era.” In 1984, he finally received the weighty biography he deserved. As a teacher and mentor, however, he was unparalleled. Doucet also understood that France needed to rise above the devastation of the first World War. His patronage of the arts meant a great deal to struggling painters attempting to get back on their feet.

Tomorrow, a most intriguing exhibition opens at The Museum of the City of New York. Entitled “Paris/New York Design, Fashion, Culture 1925-1940,” is housed in the museum’s new pavilion gallery for temporary exhibitions. There are sure to be stunning objects on display, so plan like me to head up there very soon. I’ll just put on those armorial gladiator ankle boots and go…

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

Art Deco's Couturier Patrons, Part 1 »

The first World War was truly traumatic for France, and its great designers were among the first to attempt to rally the nation’s arts in the war’s aftermath. The luxury goods trade had all but disappeared during these years. One of these designers, Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), closed her couture house at the onset of the war in 1914 and went to Rome for the duration.

Upon her return, she pressed forward with the revolutionary, often avant-garde direction of her clothes-making. She had apprenticed with lingerie makers, spurring a life-long fascination with the interplay of body and fabric. She introduced the bias cut for whole garments, in which the fabric was cut diagonally across the grain to make a springy type of drape. Vionnet’s clothes were considered very moderne, and many of her clients were celebrities and theater folk. The Art Deco style owes much to her vivid interpretations of the body in motion, especial the control and manipulation of fabric for Cubist and other modernist effects.

Take a look, too, at her official website. Items like the cowl neck, halter top, and handkerchief dress owe their inspiration to this designer. Read about her in the classic study by Sophie Dalloz-Ramaux. Interestingly, Vionnet’s skill in sewing seams and making bias cuts created huge problems for copyists and pirates, always a problem for couturiers then and now.

p.s. As a break from daily tasks, I’ve been revisiting a grand site with a fine blog, www.dandyism.net. I did a blog interview with them a few years ago while “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear” was on exhibition.

Check out the new NYPL exhibition, Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve, on view at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library (5th Ave. and 42nd St.) until January 11, 2009.

“Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

One weekend this summer, I bought a paperback copy of an amusing book in our collection, The Fashion Conspiracy by Nicholas Coleridge. Published in 1988, the book is still relevant today in the portraits it draws of fashion wealth, 80s excess, and the striking contrasts between high-end designer showrooms and Asian sweatshops. Coleridge, a British journalist and novelist, uses a form of the then-developing creative nonfiction to make his profiles and encounters more interesting. I find him a bit too credulous as a reporter, however; he recounts the story of Oscar de la Renta as the inventor of the “fashion victim” term without any demur, and repeats similar questionable anecdotes as a matter of course.

Having just finished the book, I’ve found that his title stretches the point a little. An avid reader of murder mysteries, I like to think of myself as an expert on conspiracy theories. Coleridge’s thesis really denotes a nudge and wink conspiracy, in which market players all work together to make the couture garment an amazing piece of expensive sleight-of-hand. If you want to read about someone ready and willing to link fashion with terrorism, look at this interview with Bret Easton Ellis.