Fashion

What Does Haute Couture Mean? 8 Things You Didn't Know About All Those Super Fancy Dresses

You’ve seen all the runway shows, stalked all the Vogue articles, and started keeping a mental list of all the new trends you want to buy come fall. But... you're still not really sure what haute couture means exactly. How did we even get to this state of artistic extravagance? And what happens to those drool-worthy gowns? Don't fear, dear readers: All the answers to your burning high fashion questions are in this slideshow. Click on through.

by Ritu Prasad

Couture is literally like champagne.

Couture, like the good bubbly stuff, is a highly controlled world. “Haute couture” translates to “high sewing,” so while I’m sure a lot of dressmakers would love to call themselves purveyors of couture items, you can only call your work haute couture if the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture says you can. And what are the refined requirements of the Chambre? The most important quality is that a fashion house creates custom pieces, tailored for their private clients with personal fittings. And they must do this work in Paris, and have more than twenty employees at their Parisian workshop. Oh, and of course, there are the requisite two collections to present per year. These glamorous fashion shows take place in January and July, and showcase formal wear (those fairytale-esque gowns) and day-wear (RTW).

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Charles Frederick Worth is the father of haute couture.

The start of couture was actually an English couturier from Lincolnshire named Charles Frederick Worth. He did do it in France, though, so it makes sense that Paris is considered the city of high fashion. Worth was the originator of the idea that a dressmaker is also a kind of tastemaker; he made designs individually for clients, but he also created collections that he displayed in his workshop, the House of Worth. The House was opened in 1858, after Worth had worked for two established Parisian dressers, Gagelin and Opigez. Worth’s greatest customer? None other than the Empress of France, wife of Napoleon III, Eugénie de Montijo. After the Empress was a loyal fan, you can imagine it wasn’t hard to gain more popularity. Worth is also cited as the first designer to put labels on his clothes.

Image: House of Worth/Wikimedia Commons

There are about 2,200 couture seamstresses.

And those 2,200 seamstresses make all the couture pieces you see floating down the runway. A fashion house has two parts: dressmaking, flou, and tailoring, tailleur. Each aspect of creating a couture piece involves hundreds of people, artisans, and designers. The women who sew all the intricate details of couture pieces, from sequins to embroidered designs, are known as petite mains, or tiny hands. Their job hasn’t changed much in the 100+ years couture has been around. Every ruche, every seam, every glittering fabric owes its creation to these seamstresses. Fournisseurs are artisans who specialize in crafting decorative or ornamental elements of couture clothing, like silk flowers. While the work hasn’t altered in the century, the number of workers has. For example, in the past, there were 300 artisans dedicated to working with feathers. Now it’s a sparse few. In an effort to preserve this special craft, Chanel has acquired the six oldest workshops. Lagerfeld calls them Chanel’s “satellites” and even designs clothes to specifically show off each workshop’s specialty. Dior gave us an inside look into how these artisans create just one dress, and the amount of work involved is astounding and kind of maybe justifies the price tag.

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Only about 2,000 women in the world can afford it.

Couture began its life dependent on the patronage of an Empress, so it makes sense that it remains tied to the obscenely wealthy. Nicholas Coleridge, author of The Fashion Conspiracy , guesstimated that the entirety of haute couture depends upon about thirty women. Nowadays, the market is dominated by wealthy women of the Middle East and Asia — hence why most houses have flagship stores in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Beijing, and Hong Kong. There are still women from the old money of Europe and America who are regulars of the fashion houses, but it’s clear that the balance has shifted.

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Those glamorous couture fashion shows are actually not profitable.

Runway shows of haute couture pieces account for less than 10 percent of a House’s profits — and sometimes (read: most times) they cause net losses. In fact, many of the fashion houses that followed Worth are now bankrupt. Jacques Picart, co-founder of the bankrupt Lacroix House, noted that “no matter how successful you are, you can’t make a profit from couture.” Pierre Cardin was a house that employed 500 people in its heyday, and is now unregistered from the couture group. Yves St Laurent is another famous name that has since withdrawn from the crazy couture lifestyle. Pierre Bergé, former head of YSL, believes “haute couture is a joke…it belongs to another age.” And don’t hold your breath waiting for Givenchy couture either.

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So why even bother?

It is true that haute couture is an anachronistic spectacle that’s real pretty to look at without much else to show. But that’s exactly it: It’s all for publicity. You’ve probably noticed that most of the pieces that come down the runway are amazingly un-wearable (in the words of Eugenia Sheppard, “to call fashion wearable is the kiss of death. No new fashion worth its salt is ever wearable.”). Most of the time it’s a miracle the models can even walk the length of the runway. Even of the 2,000 women who could buy the gown, how many would even want to attempt wearing one out? No, couture fashion is a fantastical thing—meant more as glamorous eye candy than a real outfit suggestion. The whole point of haute couture is to inspire. They inspire desire. Who wouldn’t go gaga at the chance to wear an Alexander McQueen ball gown or traipse around in a Chanel suit? It’s dreamy. But since I don’t have a dreamy budget, that’s a difficult dream to realize. What I can do is shell out a little bit more for a Chanel lipstick, a Dior perfume, or a Hermès scarf. And that’s precisely what the fashion houses count on — beautiful collections that amaze and make your mouth water and make you run out and buy anything with their label on it, just to get a little closer to the dream.

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The largest personal collection has 10,000 pieces.

And the enviable hoard belongs to Miss Mouna Ayoub. It gets even better (worse?) when you learn that Ayoub refuses to wear the same couture piece twice. The couture houses all keep Mouna-mannequins around to ensure that no matter where in the world Mouna Ayoub is, she can get a custom designed and tailored couture piece. I know, I’m drooling with envy too. Ayoub, a Lebanese Christian who moved to Paris following her love of couture, was a waitress when she met her future husband, a Saudi businessman. She divorced the billionaire in 1996 and became one of the richest women in the world. I’m talking, she-sold-a-single-diamond-to-pay-for-her-yacht kind of rich. But, if you can scrounge up the dough, Ayoub auctions off some of her precious possessions in “garage sales.”

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Where do those gowns go when the show is over?

If they aren’t bought, haute couture pieces go to a glorious heavenly place: the archives. Dresses are stored in the archives of a fashion house to be pulled out for vintage inspiration and general reference. Gowns are typically loaned out to actresses for fancy red carpet events (see: Emma Stone), because, again, publicity is everything. Many outfits end up going on exhibition, like Dior, YSL, or McQueen pieces at the Met. Even more so if they were once worn by famous models or actresses. At least it’s some consolation for the jealous heart that Jennifer Lawrence probably didn’t get to keep that gorgeous Dior dress?

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