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Pierre Balmain adjusting a dress on model Ruth Ford in 1947 (photographed by Carl Van Vechten)

Haute couture on the runway, by Christian Lacroix

Haute couture (French for "high sewing" or "high dressmaking" or "high fashion"; pronounced: [ot kutyʁ], English pronunciation: /ˌoʊt kuːˈtʊər/) refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. "Couture" means dressmaking, sewing, or needlework^[1] and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and refers to the same thing in spirit.^[2] "Haute" means elegant or high. A haute couture garment is made specifically for the wearer’s measurements and body stance.^[1]

It originally referred to Englishman Charles Frederick Worth's work, produced in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century.^[3] In modern France, haute couture is a "protected name" that can be used only by firms that meet certain well-defined standards. However, the term is also used loosely to describe all high-fashion custom-fitted clothing, whether it is produced in Paris or in other fashion capitals such as Milan, London, New York and Tokyo.

The term can refer to:

• the fashion houses or fashion designers that create exclusive and often trend-setting fashions
• the fashions created

Legal status[link]

In France, the term haute couture is protected by law and is defined by the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Paris based in Paris, France. The chambre syndicale de la haute couture is defined as "the regulating commission that determines which fashion houses are eligible to be true haute couture houses".^[4] Their rules state that only "those companies mentioned on the list drawn up each year by a commission domiciled at the Ministry for Industry are entitled to avail themselves" of the label haute couture.The chambre does a lot more besides deciding which companies are haute couture. They deal with piracy of style, foreign relations and coordination of the fashion collection timetables, and do some international advertising for the French fashion industry.The chambre also runs a Paris couture school to teach up and coming designers and technicians the couture trade.The school helps bring new designers to help the couture houses that are still present today. The criteria for haute couture were established in 1945 and updated in 1992.

To earn the right to call itself a couture house and to use the term haute couture in its advertising and any other way, members of the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture must follow these rules:

• Design made-to-order for private clients, with one or more fittings.
• Have a workshop (atelier) in Paris that employs at least fifteen people full-time.
• Must have 20 full time technical people in at least one atelier or workshop.
• Each season (i.e., twice a year), present a collection to the Paris press, comprising at least thirty-five runs/exits with outfits for both daytime wear and evening wear.

However, the term haute couture may have been misused by ready-to-wear brands since the late 1980s, so that its true meaning may have become blurred with that of prêt-à-porter (the French term for ready-to-wear fashion) in the public perception. Every haute couture house also markets prêt-à-porter collections, which typically deliver a higher return on investment than their custom clothing^{[citation needed]}. Falling revenues have forced a few couture houses to abandon their less profitable couture division and concentrate solely on the less prestigious prêt-à-porter. These houses, such as Italian designer Roberto Capucci, all of whom have their workshops in Italy, are no longer considered haute couture.

Many top designer fashion houses, such as Chanel, use the word for some of their special collections. These collections are often not for sale or they are very difficult to purchase. Sometimes, "haute couture" is inappropriately used to label non-dressmaking activities, such as fine art, music and more.^[5]

[edit] Members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture

For the Spring-Summer 2012 season the official list of members is:^[6]

Official members

Adeline André — Anne Valérie Hash — Atelier Gustavolins — Chanel — Christian Dior — Christophe Josse — Franck Sorbier — Givenchy — Jean Paul Gaultier — Maurizio Galante — Stéphane Rolland  — Giambattista Valli^[7]

Correspondent members (foreign)

Azzedine Alaïa — Elie Saab — Giorgio Armani — Valentino — Versace — Sir Jason Twist (coming back in SS2012)^[8]

Guest members

Alexis Mabille — Alexandre Vauthier — Bouchra Jarrar — Iris Van Herpen — Julien Fournié — Maxime Simoens — Yiqing Yin (new in season SS2012)^[8]

Jewelry

Boucheron — Chanel Joaillerie — Chaumet — Dior Joaillerie — Van Cleef & Arpels

Accessories

Loulou de la Falaise — Massaro — On Aura Tout Vu

Recent Guest members have included the fashion houses of Boudicca, Cathy Pill, Richard René and Udo Edling,^[9] as well as Eymeric François, Gérald Watelet, Nicolas Le Cauchois^[10] and Wuyong.^[11] In the 2008/2009 Fall/Winter Haute Couture week, Emanuel Ungaro showed as an Official Member.

Former members

History[link]

Chanel Haute Couture Fall-Winter 2011-2012 Fashion Show by Karl Lagerfeld

Italian leadership in European fashion may date from the 18th century, however French fashion is also considerably influential in terms of Haute Couture - when the art, architecture, music, and fashions of the French court at Versailles were imitated across Europe^{[citation needed]}. Visitors to Paris brought back clothing that was then copied by local dressmakers. Stylish women also ordered fashion dolls dressed in the latest Parisian fashion to serve as models.

As railroads and steamships made European travel easier, it was increasingly common for wealthy women to travel to Paris to shop for clothing and accessories. French fitters and dressmakers were commonly thought to be the best in Europe, and real Parisian garments were considered better than local imitations.

The couturier Charles Frederick Worth (October 13, 1826–March 10, 1895), is widely considered the father of haute couture as it is known today.^[3][13] Although born in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England, Worth made his mark in the French fashion industry. Revolutionizing how dressmaking had been previously perceived, Worth made it so the dressmaker became the artist of garnishment: a fashion designer. While he created one-of-a-kind designs to please some of his titled or wealthy customers, he is best known for preparing a portfolio of designs that were shown on live models at the House of Worth. Clients selected one model, specified colors and fabrics, and had a duplicate garment tailor-made in Worth's workshop. Worth combined individual tailoring with a standardization more characteristic of the ready-to-wear clothing industry, which was also developing during this period.

Following in Worth's footsteps were Callot Soeurs, Patou, Poiret, Vionnet, Fortuny, Lanvin, Chanel, Mainbocher, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, and Dior. Some of these fashion houses still exist today, under the leadership of modern designers.

In the 1960s a group of young designers who had trained under men like Dior and Balenciaga left these established couture houses and opened their own establishments. The most successful of these young designers were Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, André Courrèges, Ted Lapidus, and Emanuel Ungaro. Japanese native and Paris-based Hanae Mori was also successful in establishing her own line.

Lacroix is one of the fashion houses to have been started in the late 20th century. Other new houses have included Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler. Due to the high expenses of producing haute couture collections, Lacroix and Mugler have since ceased their haute couture activities.

For all these fashion houses, custom clothing is no longer the main source of income, often costing much more than it earns through direct sales; it only adds the aura of fashion to their ventures in ready-to-wear clothing and related luxury products such as shoes and perfumes, and licensing ventures that earn greater returns for the company. Excessive commercialization and profit-making can be damaging, however. Cardin, for example, licensed with abandon in the 1980s and his name lost most of its fashionable cachet when anyone could buy Cardin luggage at a discount store. It is their ready-to-wear collections that are available to a wider audience, adding a splash of glamour and the feel of haute couture to more wardrobes.

The 1960s also featured a revolt against established fashion standards by mods, rockers, and hippies, as well as an increasing internationalization of the fashion scene. Jet travel had spawned a jet set that partied—and shopped—just as happily in New York as in Paris. Rich women no longer felt that a Paris dress was necessarily better than one sewn elsewhere. While Paris is still pre-eminent in the fashion world, it is no longer the sole arbiter of fashion.

Decline of Haute Couture[link]

The number of couture houses decreased considerably over the 20th century, from 106 in 1946^{[citation needed]} to a mere 18 in 2000^{[citation needed]}. By 2004 there were only 9 high-ranking couture houses: Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Gaultier, Lacroix, Mori, Sirop, Scherrer, and Torrente.^{[citation needed]} The listing has been in considerable flux in recent years.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

Fashion portal

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Haute couture

Look up couturier in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Introduction in Haute Couture
• "Haute Couture" from Label France, a magazine of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs
• Haute Couture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History
• "The Golden Age of Couture". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibition.php. Retrieved 2007-09-13. 
• "Interactive timeline of couture houses and couturier biographies". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/explore.php. 
• Fédération française de la couture
• Haute Couture News

The Christian Dior Home and Museum in Granville (Manche), France.

Christian Dior (French pronunciation: [kʁistjɑ̃ djɔːʁ]) (21 January 1905 – 23 October 1957) was a French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.

Early life[link]

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, the former Isabelle Cardamone. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Ginette (aka Catherine).^[1] When Christian was about five years old, the family moved to Paris, France, but still returned to the Normandy coast for summer vacations.

Dior's family had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior was artistic and wished to be involved in fashion. To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each. In 1928, Dior left school and received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso. Three years later, after the death of Dior's mother and brother and a financial disaster in the family’s fertilizer business, during the Great Depression, that resulted in his father losing control of Dior Frères, the gallery had to be closed. From then until about 1940 he worked with fashion designer Robert Piguet, when he was called up for military service.

In 1942, when Dior left the Army, Dior joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. For the duration of World War II, Dior, as an employee of Lelong — who labored to preserve the French fashion industry during wartime for economic and artistic reasons — designed dresses for the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators, as did other fashion houses that remained in business during the war, including Jean Patou, Jeanne Lanvin, and Nina Ricci.^[2][3] While Dior dressed Nazi wives, his sister Catherine (1917—2008) served as a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was incarcerated until she was liberated in May 1945.^[4]

The Dior fashion house[link]

On 16 December 1946 Dior founded his fashion house, backed by Marcel Boussac, a cotton-fabric magnate. The actual name of the line of his first collection, presented in early 1947, was Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the phrase New Look was coined for it by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric.^[5] He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women." His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form.

Initially, women protested because his designs covered up their legs, which they had been unused to because of the previous limitations on fabric. There was also some backlash to Dior's designs due to the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit. During one photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by female vendors over this profligacy, but opposition ceased as the wartime shortages ended. The "New Look" (a name given it by American fashion-magazine editor Carmel Snow) revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.

Death[link]

Dior died while on holiday in Montecatini, Italy on 23 October 1957. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack after choking on a fish bone.^[6] Time's obituary stated that he died of a heart attack after playing a game of cards.^[7] However, the Paris socialite and Dior acquaintance Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé, stated in his memoirs that contemporary rumor had it that the fashion designer succumbed to a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter. Some even think that he died because of a seizure. To this day, the exact circumstances remain undisclosed.

Dior was a bachelor.

Tributes[link]

The Paul Gallico novella Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958, UK title Flowers for Mrs Harris) tells the story of a London charwoman who falls in love with her employer's couture wardrobe and decides to go to Paris to purchase herself a Dior ballgown.

A perfume named Christian Dior is used in Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as an influential symbol placed at critical plot points throughout.

The English singer-songwriter Morrissey released a song titled "Christian Dior" as a b-side to his 2006 single "In the Future When All's Well".

American Rapper/Producer Kanye West released a song titled "Christian Dior Denim Flow" as a 2010 Fashion Week single.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Christian Dior official website
• Christian Dior designer profile at Fashion Model Directory
• A biography of Christian Dior
• Sewing patterns by Christian Dior
• "'Bar' Suit and Hat". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibHighBarSuit.php. Retrieved 11 November 2007. 
• "Zémire evening ensemble". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/exhibHighZemire.php. Retrieved 13 November 2007. 
• Photos of Dior and Samples of New Look Fashion
• "Interactive timeline of couture houses and couturier biographies". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1486_couture/explore.php. 
• [1] Documentary film Christian Dior, The Man Behind The Myth
• Christian Dior at Chicago History Museum Digital Collections

Stéphane Rolland
Stéphane Rolland in his atelier at Avenue George V in Paris
Nationality	French
Education	Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture
Occupation	Fashion designer
Labels	Stéphane Rolland

Stéphane Rolland (pronounced: [ste.fan ʁɔ.lɑ̃]) is a French fashion designer and an haute couture fashion brand.

Early life[link]

Rolland spent his childhood in the South of France,^[1] Argentina and the West Indies. He studied fashion in Paris at l’Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture.^[2]

Fashion career[link]

At the age of 20 Rolland joined Balenciaga and within a year was promoted to the position of Creative Director of menswear and international licenses. At 24, he left Balenciaga to start his own prêt-à-porter company, which he ran for six years, until Jean-Louis Scherrer asked him to become the artistic manager of his haute couture fashion house, a position he occupied for the next ten years.^[2]

Rolland simultaneously worked as a costume designer. In 2006 and 2007, he was nominated for the prestigious Molière awards and became an official partner of the Cannes Film Festival.

On the 2 July 2007, Rolland presented a couture collection under his own name.

Rolland is a full member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture and therefore his brand can officially bear the "haute couture" label.^[3][4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since November 2009. Its tone or style may not reflect the formal tone used on Wikipedia. Tagged since September 2010. It contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Tagged since September 2010.

Martin Margiela (born April 9, 1957 in Genk, Belgium) is a Belgian fashion designer. He studied at Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts along with the legendary avantgarde fashion collective the Antwerp Six. Many^[who?] still consider him to be the "7th" member of the collective.

Life and work[link]

After graduation in 1980 he worked as a freelance designer for five years. Between 1985 and 1987 he worked for Jean Paul Gaultier, before showing his first collection under his own label in 1989. Between 1997 to 2003 he became, despite his non-traditional design, the creative director of the Hermès women's line.

During the 1980s, the Japanese avantgardists, with Rei Kawakubo—creator of the label Comme des Garçons—had turned the fashion scene upside-down with their eccentric and ground-breaking designs. Martin Margiela and the Antwerp Six would carry on the work, revolting against the luxurious fashion world with garments of oversized proportions such as long arms, and with linings, seams and hems on the outside. The concept of deconstruction, also embraced by the aforementioned Rei Kawakubo, is important for the understanding of Martin Margiela's fashion statement. Margiela famously redesigns by hand objects such as old wigs, canvases and silk scarves into couture garments.

Throughout his career, Martin Margiela has maintained an extremely low profile. He has never had his picture taken and remains backstage after his shows. All media contact is dealt with via fax. Maison Martin Margiela’s ultradiscreet trademark consists of a piece of cloth with the numbers 0-23 (see table below). The badge is attached to the inside with its four little white pick stitches, exposed to the outside on unlined garments. For the 20'th anniversary the anonymous tag was replaced by a classic logotype.

Margiela's brand was acquired by the Diesel brand in 2002 and industry insiders quoted in the article suggested that Martin Margiela may desire to leave due to creative differences, or simply, "... a desire to enjoy his life outside the insistent glare of the fashion world."

An article in New York Times dated October 1, 2008, gave many in the fashion world their first glimpse of Margiela's face, as well as breaking the news that he allegedly offered to hand the reins of his company over to Raf Simons, who appears to have declined the offer. Haider Ackermann was later offered the position as creative director, but similarly turned it down.

In October, 2009, Margiela majority stakeholder Renzo Rosso finally made public: "Martin has not been there for a long time. He is here but not here. We have a new fresh design team on board. We are focusing on young, realistic energy for the future; this is really Margiela for the year 2015."

A press release announced in December, that Margiela "has left the business. No replacement creative director will be appointed. Maison Martin Margiela will continue trading but the company declined to comment on the reasons for Margiela’s exit."^[1]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Menkes, Suzy (6 September 1994). "Martin Margiela". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/06/style/06iht-fmargiela.html. Retrieved 6 December 2009. ^{[dead link]}
• Wilson, Eric (1 October 2008). "Fashion’s Invisible Man". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/fashion/shows/02MARGIELA.html?fta=y&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 6 December 2009. 
• Walker, Harriet (6 December 2009). "Out of sight, not out of mind: Celebrating two decades of Martin Margiela magic". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/out-of-sight-not-out-of-mind-celebrating-two-decades-of-martin-margiela-magic-1832810.html. Retrieved 6 December 2009. 

External links[link]

• Martin Margiela designer profile at Fashion Model Directory
• A MAGAZINE curated by Maison Martin Margiela
• A BLOG curated by Maison Martin Margiela
• Biography from ArtandCulture.com