'Haute couture' goes back several centuries, specifically the year 1868, when the needle artists came together to form the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, a body to regulate this business and today is encompassed within the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt - à -Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode, founded in 1973 and located at number 100 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré.
The French Ministry of Industry and Fédération Française own the Couture are responsible to dictate what homes are termed 'haute couture'.
The requirements are first: should create custom designs and offer several test sessions to ensure that clothes stay perfect. Moreover, firms have to have a workshop in Paris who works full time and has more than twenty employees. And finally, present two new collections a year, one in January and one in July, composed of both pieces for day and night.
A collective known as 'les petite mains' is in charge of creating each piece by hand. A process in which they can get to invest hundreds of hours using the highest quality fabrics. It is not surprising, therefore, that the cheaper parts reach a price of several thousand euros. A value that increases in the number of craftsmen, time, design and materials used.
Very expensive and unique pieces that just are handmade and custom and take months to be delivered.
The couture houses say the double-digit increase in sales is due to the arrival of a new consumer, largely from the technology industry.
The tension between past and present is inevitable in a discipline that continues to identify the fifties as its golden age as care to remember an exhibition that will open on July 12 at the Galliera Museum in Paris. A decade which served as inspiration for Donatella Versace theoretical in their parade on Sunday. Although Versace also took the time reference with much freedom and ended up bringing the issue to his usual spot at the hands of corsets, leather and metal closures and gowns that bare legs to the limit.
If you take the word 'couture' to the letter, its definition would be making exclusive pieces created customized. However, the label 'haute couture' involves much more than creating garments for a unique public alike; has become an art. Also fashion and technology have become good friends.
