Haute Couture is the creation of a fashion garment that is custom made for a specific person or member, the garments are custom-fitted and constructed by hand. Examples of Haute Couture fashion houses are Dior, Chanel, Valentino and Givenchy. The garments are required to be constructed in Paris and the client must have at least one fitting in order for the garment to be classed as Haute Couture. Fashion houses must employ 15 or more people and present their collections twice a year (Johnson, 2007). ‘A single dress can take up to 400 hours to create’ (The secret world of Haute Couture, 2007).
Haute Couture clothing is extremely expensive. A very small number of people can afford these garments. ‘Today only 2,000 women in the world buy couture clothes; 60% are American. Only 200 are regular customers.’ (Johnson, 2007).
Haute Couture began in the 1860‘s when Englishman, Charles Worth started making dresses for Napoleon’s wife. Haute Couture first became extremely popular in 1947, when Christian Dior presented his first fashion collection. (Stylist, 2011).
‘Just two years after the end of the war, Dior, with this collection in his image, definitively turned the page of restriction, gloom, rationing, gravity and uniforms. With the utmost seriousness he wanted to give back to women their taste for light-heartedness, the art of seduction.’ (Dior.com, n.d.).
Figure 1 shows The Bar Suit, which was part of Dior’s 1947 Haute Couture collection. During the war there had been rationing of both food and fabrics, mostly limited to heavy uniform material. Dior wanted to make women feel like women again, The Bar Suit is smart but shows off a women’s figure.
Figure 2 is an example of contemporary haute couture. The Dior garment is part of their SS...
... middle of paper ...
....
Stylist. 2011. Haute couture: the weird and the wonderful. [online] Available at: http://www.stylist.co.uk/fashion/show-stopping-haute-couture [Accessed: 10 Apr 2014].
The secret world of haute couture. 2007. [film] BBC production for BBC2: Chanel (Firm).
The SunPost. 2014. Art: Bass Museum of Art Explores Haute Couture Fashion and Contemporary Art - The SunPost. [online] Available at: http://miamisunpost.com/art-bass-museum-art-explores-haute-couture-fashion-contemporary-art/ [Accessed: 10 Apr 2014].
Troy, N. J. 2003. Couture culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Wells, N. 2009. Runway 101: What is the difference between Ready-to-Wear and Couture?. [online] Available at: http://www.examiner.com/article/runway-101-what-is-the-difference-between-ready-to-wear-and-couture [Accessed: 10 Apr 2014].
Welters, L. and Lillethun, A. 2011. The fashion reader. Oxford: Berg.
Although Collette Dinnigan’s style varies slightly from season to season the same philosophy “to produce beautiful pieces that are affordable, wearable, versatile and child friendly” remains constant as does her “passionate feeling for what women want” 2. This is especially evident in her Autumn/Winter 2008 collection ‘Midnight in Moscow’ where Dinnigan implements a more ominous theme making it luxury self-indulgence. The collection is dark with an armoured feel combined with silver hues and dark shades in gladiator-style dresses, girly pleated gowns and military-style jackets. The darkness of these designs contrast heavily with her tr...
Joyce first reveals to readers how obsessed the narrator is with sacred allusions to a chalice and a prayer. The narrator tells readers he “imagined that [he] bore [his] chalice safely through a throng of foes” (598) as he remembers the girl when he is making his way through the crowded market. The chalice is a biblical reference to the cup from which Jesus drank during the Last Supper in Matthew 6. This sacred reference “elucidates the importance and value the boy places on the very name of his love” (Flynn). This allusion to the chalice allows readers to see how sacred the girl is to the young narrator. Shortly after this, while the narrator is in his room he “[presses] the palms of his hands together until they [tremble], murmuring: O love! O love!” (598). This semblance of prayer also shows how sacredly the narrator upholds the girl he likes. However, she soons tells him she cannot attend Araby, a bazaar, because “there would be a retreat that week in her convent” (598), making readers assume she is going to be a nun. If she is going to be a nun, then the narrator has no chance of dating or marrying her, and his obsession with her is pointless. Unfortunately, he does not come to realize this until the very end of the
The ending of the story is almost as ambiguous as its back-and-forth treatment of religion and romance. It is not clear exactly what he has realized, nor is it clear whether there is a clear distinction between what is religious and what is romantic, between what is sacred and divine and what is worldly and base. But perhaps Joyce, in whom these two elements were equally confused, would have wanted it that way.
Givenchy’s love for fashion grew when at the age of ten he attended the Pavillon d’ Elegance Paris Exposition. Once looking through Vogue magazine, he was inspired by Balenciaga men’s wear. He wanted to be a couturier and attended Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, to start a formal education in fashion. His designing inspirations came from Elsa Schiaparelli and Madam Gres’s work. His experience also came from working at the House of Piguet in Paris; this salon was known for its dramatic yet simple style and after, at the House of Lelong that was known for their high quality clothing. Those positions gave him knowledge on how to work with couture customers and gave him an opportunity to build strong relationships with them (Press, 2002).
The Chronicle of Western Fashion: From Ancient times to the Present Day.
Werle, Simone. Fashionista A Century of Style Icons. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1977. Print.
Wallach, Janet. Chanel: Her Style and Her Life. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1999. Print. "Fashion in the 1900s."
Fashion has been around ever since ancient times, since the time of the Romans, it survived the world wars and is yet today a business with rapid changes. Fashion started off as an art form, a way for the rich to show their social status with unique and innovative designs that only they could afford. It was a way to separate the social classes of the society. In this paper I will include the creators of haute couture, and how the following designers developed couture, as well as leading names in today’s ready-to-wear industry. The list is long, but I chose to focus on the three most important designers in the modern fashion industry.
The narrator in “Araby” is a young man who lives in an uninteresting area and dreary house in Dublin. The only seemingly exciting thing about the boy’s existence is the sister of his friend Mangum that he is hopelessly in love with; “…her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 2279) In an attempt to impress her and bring some color into his own gray life, he impulsively lies to her that he is planning on attending a bazaar called Arab. He also promises the gi...
In Deauville, she introduced casual knit dresses which was shockingly different from what others were creating and wearing. “She introduced relaxed dressing expressing the aspirations of the 20th century woman, replacing impractical clothing with functional styling.” (Martin 80). Her designs stressed simplicity and comfort and revolutionized the fashion industry. Within five years of her original use of jersey fabric to create a poor girl look, had attracted the attention of influential wealthy women seeking relief from the prevalent corseted style. In 1954, Chanel presented her new collection of the signature suit. The Chanel suit is a standard garment in modern fashion. “The key to her design philosophy was construction, producing traditional classics outliving each season’s new fashion trends and apparel.” (Martin
Fashion plays an important role in the lives of billions all over the world; people, as part of a status craving society, turn to “fashion capitals” of the world for ways in which to dress and carry themselves. New York, Milan, and Paris are leaders among this fierce industry that the world lusts after. Fashion can speak volumes about ones personality, or also about the condition the world is in at the time. In France, fashion changed rapidly and feverously as the times changed.
Stent, S., 2011, ‘Fetishizing the Feminine: the Surreal Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli’, Nottingham French Studies, September, 50, 78-87.
Pre-war fashion was significantly different than during and after war. In the early 1930's, female fashion was largely considered to be elegant and smart. Women wore small hats and gloves, as well as long,slim dresses and coats to help them appear taller than they were, ' dresses were slim and straight, being sometimes wider at the shoulders than at the hips'(Laver 2012, p.243). This was both in fashion magazines and for modern women of the time. By the mid 30's, fashion was using patterns and bolder colours. Similar to the style of the roaring 20's, women continued to wear stiletto's. However, by 1937, the war begun and elements of fashion was beginning to be considered for other uses, this included, cotton being used for parachutes. During this time, as men were out at war, a gap was left in the factories and required workers, which women then filled. Fashion for women at this time began to shift, women were unable to acquire stockings due to the difficulty of obtaining the material, at the same tim...
Historically, multiple styles of dressing have been created during the last several decades, which played an important role in modern fashion in the UK. Everyone has a different and unique dressing style in their general life. Some styles are influenced in vintage styles which is attributing to the deep effects of old vogue, and another group of dressing styles are inclined into the fresh element. According to those different styles some of them are even evolved in the milestones in fashion history.
Fashion takes on many different facets and concerns many subsets— a model sashaying down the runway in a gown encrusted in real gems, Lady Gaga’s infamous dress made of cuts of raw beef, a teenage girl obsessing over the season’s latest styles— it is all an expression of our minds and who we are or want to be, made tangible. It is a medium just like any other, for while artists wield brushes and paints, designers use thread and cloth to illustrate their vision. The artistry is none more so apparent than in the exclusive world of haute couture, a world of extravagance that caters to aesthetics, producing one-of-a-kind wearable masterpieces that are made to be admired rather than worn. It is without doubt, high fashion and its design is an art.