COUTURE WEEK SOON UPON US

With Couture Week just around the corner, many are questioning the appropriateness and relevancy of the exquisite craft that is couture. British Vogue revealed some snipits from a reporter’s conversation with Didier Grumbach who is the president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt à Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode.

He told a reporter with the Taipei Times that couture is in fact not an industry, it is a savoir faire, a craft, and is a complement to ready-to-wear and that when haute couture was organized and structured the way it was in 1944, there was no ready-to-wear as we know it today. Everything was made for you. Creative ready-to-wear did not exist.

The Frenchmen adds that today Chanel and Dior are not only the biggest exporters of ready-to-wear, but also the most lauded couture houses. Though it is common knowledge that without their ready-to-wear lines, the Chanel and Dior couture lines could not exist, Grumbach exclaims – “In the end, fashion is an industry and the designer has to compromise, but during a certain period of the designer's life, it is art, it must be art.  If not, there is nothing and a brand cannot last.”

How the public and the press react to the upcoming couture collections remains to be seen, but hopefully most will continue to see couture as an exciting form of artistic expression and not a dying craft. Below is the list of Haute Couture Members and Correspondents Members --

ADELINE ANDRÉ



ANNE VALÉRIE HASH

CHANEL

CHRISTIAN DIOR

CHRISTIAN LACROIX

DOMINIQUE SIROP



FRANCK SORBIER

GIVENCHY

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER



MAURIZIO GALANTE



STÉPHANE ROLLAND

ELIE SAAB



GIORGIO ARMANI



MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA

VALENTINO

Images courtesy of the Fashion Spot forums.