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FASHION

Paris Fashion week goes Haute Couture

Paris Fashion Week shifts up a gear on Sunday with its marquee event: the Haute Couture shows that happen only in the French capital.

Published: 25 January 2015 14:24 CET
Paris Fashion week goes Haute Couture
Haute Couture from Schiaparelli. Photo: Screen grab.

After days of men's ready-to-wear clothes, Italian house Versace will be the first to step into the prestige whirl of handmade women's collections for spring-summer 2015.

In all, 24 catwalk shows, including ones by Chanel, Christian Dior and Valentino, are to take place in coming days, filling palaces, museums and more offbeat venues in Paris with celebrities, journalists and the extremely wealthy women who can afford the creations whose price tags run into tens of thousands of euros (dollars).

France is the only country to boast Haute Couture, twice a year, in January and in July. The designation is protected by French law and attributed exclusively by the ministry of industry.

Houses — French and non-French — that win the label have to show their high-end clothes are entirely made by hand and tailored to each client. Only 14 outlets are allowed to say they are full-fledged Haute Couture, most of them highly recognisable French designers.

The most recent to be admitted into the very exclusive club is Alexandre Vauthier, which counts pop divas Rihanna and Beyonce among its fans. Many other wannabes are lined up hoping to get in.

Some of the other shows happening in Paris are by fashion houses that have achieved an intermediate status, or which have been invited on a temporary basis. Versace, Valentino, Viktor&Rolf, Yiqing Yin and Schiaparelli are in those categories.

– 'International notoriety' –

"The Haute Couture label allows a brand to make its name internationally more quickly and gives a lot more visibility," explained Didier Grumbach, a fashion expert and former president of the Federation Française de la Couture that organises the shows.

Schiaparelli, a legendary house founded in 1930 that once rivalled Coco Chanel, will roll out its creation on Monday despite the surprise departure of its esteemed Italian creative director, Marco Zanini, last November.

The brand had been in hibernation for six decades before making its Haute Couture comeback a year ago. 

Internationally famed brands Dior and Chanel will show on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

And on Friday many eyes will be trained on Jean Paul Gaultier, who late last year announced he was ditching his ready-to-wear collections entirely to concentrate on Haute Couture and other projects. The biggest hole in the calendar is Maison Margiela, which has taken on John Galliano three years after the British designer disgraced himself out his Dior job by making drunken anti-Semitic comments in a Paris bar.

In a snub to Paris and those who spurned him, Galliano opted this month to show an "artisinale" collection in London — a decision that raised eyebrows and that, if repeated, could cause Margiela to lose its Haute Couture status.

Below is a video from Schiaparelli showing how one item of its Haute Couture clothing was made. 

FASHION

Paris exhibition celebrates 100 years of French Vogue

A new exhibition in Paris will tell the story of 100 years of French Vogue - from the post-war 'New Look' of Christian Dior through the sexual liberation of the 1960s to the dangling-cigarette waifs of the 2000s.

Published: 7 October 2021 08:21 CEST
French Vogue celebrates 100 years
French Vogue celebrates 100 years. Photo: Thomas Olva/AFP

But as well as celebrating the magazine’s storied history, the exhibit comes at a time of turbulence for the publication.

Just last month, it was confirmed that its editor of 10 years, Emmanuelle Alt, was out and wouldn’t be replaced.

She was not alone.

Looking to cut costs, owner Conde Nast International has axed editors across Europe over the past year, and put international Vogue editions under the direct control of global editorial director, Anna Wintour, in New York.

New York-based Anna Wintour now has overall control of French Vogue. Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP

Like much of the media industry, Vogue is struggling with tumbling sales and ad revenue in the digital era.

But the latest twist is also part of the endless push and pull between New York and Paris going back to its early days.

“The whole history of French Vogue is one of back-and-forth with Conde Nast in New York – growing more independent for a while, then being reined back in,” said Sylvie Lecallier, curator of the new exhibition, “Vogue Paris 1920-2020″, which opened this weekend after a year’s delay due to the pandemic.

The Paris edition was often the loftier, more bohemian sibling to its more hard-nosed New York version.

But it was also the hotbed in which much of 20th century style and womenhood came to be defined.

“Paris was the place to hunt out talent and content and bring it to New York,” said Lecallier.

The exhibition charts the evolution from art deco drawings of the 1920s through the erotic image-making of photographers like Helmut Newton in the 1960s and 1970s.

Its last peak was under editor Carine Roitfeld in the 2000s, who brought back a provocative Gallic identity by ridding the newsroom of foreign staff and becoming a fashion icon in her own right.

Her successor, Alt, was a quieter presence, though she still oversaw key moments including its first transgender cover star, Brazilian Valentina Sampaio, in 2017.

But internet culture has created “a perfect storm” for Vogue, says media expert Douglas McCabe of Enders Analysis.

“The first 80 years of Vogue’s life, it had the market to itself, it was the bible for fashion,” McCabe told AFP.

“But online today, there are so many other ways to get your information. Influencers, Instagram, YouTube — everyone’s a threat.”

In a world where new fashion trends can blow up around the world in seconds, it has become much harder for a monthly magazine to set the pace.

“It’s not that they can’t survive for another 100 years — but they will be differently sized,” McCabe said.

Vogue has tried to branch out into different areas, including events.

“I used to work for a magazine, and today I work for a brand,” Alt said on the eve of French Vogue’s 1,000th issue in 2019.

But the big money was always in print, and Vogue Paris sales are dropping steadily from 98,345 in 2017 to 81,962 to 2020, according to data site ACPM.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the new top job in Paris, redefined as “head of editorial content”, went to Eugenie Trochu, who was key to building the magazine’s online presence.

She declared herself “thrilled to be part of Vogue’s international transformation”.

For the curator of the exhibition, it is ironic timing.

“We had no idea it would end like this when we started work on the exhibition,” said Lecallier.

“Who knows where it will go from here.”

The exhibition Vogue Paris 1920-2020 is at the Palais Galliera in Paris’ 16th arrondissement. The gallery is open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Sunday and is closed on Mondays. Tickets for the exhibition are €14 (€12 for concessions and under 18s go free) and must be reserved online in advance. 

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