Vive la Haute Couture!
The death of haute
couture is a constant refrain of fashion critics. It has been coming to an
end ever since it started, much like culture in general. What a killing blow
was suffered by haute couture in the first decade of this century, when
The Press was first invited to fashion showings! Its presence would surely
destroy the secrecy between a lady and her dressmaker, which was crucial to
individual distinction. More than half a century later, the ascent of
ready-to-wear dealt another allegedly fatal stroke to haute couture , as
formal elegance began to look tacky, and ethnic and thrift-shop gear gained
status. More recently, the street fashion called "grunge" was imitated by
couture designers at five-figure prices, and again, dirges could be heard. One
imagines that discriminating people in the 16 th century mourned the
death of high fashion in much the same way, when slashed sleeves, grotesquely
imitating the rags of mercenary soldiers, came into style.
A few
weeks ago, Sotheby's held an auction of haute couture clothes,
accessories, and related materials. Most of the garments belonged to elegant
Parisiennes whose names and photographs embellished the catalog and who were
selling their dresses to benefit good causes in the manner of Princess Diana.
These clothes dated back to about 1960 at the earliest and to the early 1990s
at the latest. A few dresses, shown together in the catalog as a group titled
"Les Createurs ," were nameless as to owners, and dated as far back as
1939. Before the auction I went to Sotheby's, eager to view such elegant
castoffs at close range. You could handle them if you wore the white cotton
gloves provided by the vigilant Sotheby's staff, who hastened over whenever you
leaned your nose too near the chiffon or made too broad a gesture toward the
embroidery.
It's more interesting to see what actual couture clients
ordered and wore than it is to look at runway numbers worn only by models. One
noticeable fact is that rich women, unlike beautiful models, are not all tall
and thin. Displays of historical costume have always revealed the way
fashion-plate chic used to be adapted by clever dressmakers for the beefy or
dumpy or flat-chested, but we're now used to thinking that fashionable bodies
are molded to fit the mode, with the help of individualized exercise,
liposuction, and implants. It's not true, at least not in Paris. Some of the
garments fitted onto padded mannequins showed that their wearers were of
physical as well as financial substance, and these masterpieces are striking
mainly as imaginative triumphs of individual fit and suitability.
The stuff
was classic in the best sense, lacking quirkiness and full of internal harmony
even when it was daring, always both beautiful and personal. The ensemble that
fetched the highest price--$17,250 (advance estimate $1,500-$2,000; buyer
anonymous)--was a formal black taffeta, strapless dress with a matching
shawl-collared jacket designed by Yves St. Laurent for Christian Dior in 1958.
Since it's part of YSL's first collection as Dior's successor, this object has
clear historic value and great elegance, but not much independent life. It
needs a woman inside it, preferably the one for whom it was made--not named in
this case. The same is true of the navy wool two-piece Dior dress that fetched
the next highest figure ($16,000, estimate also $1,500-$2,000; sold to a
private collector), another historical object representing the New Look in 1948
with a close fit, high collar, and richly draped skirt. Beautifully realized,
very wearable, very simple, it should obviously be worn to lunch, not put on
exhibit. I was glad to hear from the director of Sotheby's fashion department
that most buyers do wear their purchases, prepared to sacrifice currency for
unimpeachable quality.
Among the named original owners, the most palpably present
in her clothes was Catherine Deneuve, whose magnetic and statuesque beauty was
easy to imagine inhabiting these sweeping YSL evening dresses. Another was the
dark and impeccable Parisienne Jacqueline, Comtesse de Ribes, herself a
designer, whose masterpiece here must have suited her perfectly. For this
dress, she first coated the torso in high-necked, long-sleeved transparent
black lace. Covering the breasts was a joined pair of black velvet,
diamond-shaped patches, whose bottom points met the top points of a long black
velvet skirt, of which the top edge plunged in one sharp V to the lace-covered
navel in front, and swept diagonally back in a bigger V to the bottom of the
lace-covered spine. At their top points, the black breast-diamonds were
attached to thin black ribbons that climbed over the shoulders. Two other
ribbons came around from the sides, and two more rose diagonally from the hips
halfway down the rear plunge, all six converging between the shoulder blades
with a bow. Two more bows appeared on the shoulders and two more
correspondingly at the hips where the lower two ribbons began. Like almost
everything in the whole group, this amazing dress combined complexity and
simplicity, sensuality and decorum, refined wit and strong impact. French
haute couture has been famous for achieving this combination for 140
years, solidly backed up by visibly inventive tailoring and visibly exquisite
fabrics and craftsmanship. The result is an undeniable beauty whatever the
mode, a beauty specifically meant to render the individual wearer beautiful,
too.
By contrast, the current show
at the Fashion Institute of Technology, called "50 years of Fashion: The New
Look to Now," mainly focuses on the impact of the garments themselves. The
show, an instructive panorama of shifting taste in the last half-century seen
through the innovative work of designers from England, Japan, Italy, and
America interspersed with French examples, demonstrates how changing
perceptions of high fashion have slowly altered its character. Fifty years ago,
the close-range visual value of haute couture clothes emphasized their
rarity and the rarity of their wearers, faintly implying that they were all
hereditary nobility in the daily habit of entering well-appointed, finely
proportioned rooms. Fashion shows were designed as exclusive events. Fashion
photography aided that impression with formal views of nameless, thoroughbred
models. Since then, all fashion has gradually become a branch of popular
entertainment that involves everybody in its creation of vast revenues, through
carefully fostered connections with all kinds of celebrity and fantasy.
Designers
like John Galliano have the media image of star performers. The clothes, too,
have the fantasy look of things not made with hands, things always more
fleetingly pungent or allusive than they are authoritatively beautiful, visions
that float across the TV screen on the bodies of the fantasy figures for whom
they have been designed, costumes for one performance. Just as with actual
costumes, the deep thought and careful work are undiscernible and no part of
the appeal; everything must look easily conjured up and as easily swept away.
photos suggest the same thing, with nonthoroughbred models lolling and
crumpling their clothes as they gaze straight at you, a strap slipping down,
unless they're poised in fragile tinseled drapes and staring from under dream
headgear. Fashion journalists covering the couture are careful to explain the
precise tailoring and the deft application of the paillettes, since most of it
isn't meant to register on the scanning gaze. The throwaway aspect of popular
inexpensive fashion, now normal since nobody learns to sew, has lent its look
to the costly couture, which more and more seems incompletely imagined and only
half realized.
But real quality does show at close range. At FIT there is
a 1986 hooded and trained evening dress by Azzedine Alaia, made of slinky green
acetate knit that molds the body better than a glove, with similarly canny
curved seaming. Set into one of these audacious seams is a zipper that begins
between the breasts, snakes up over one shoulder, slithers diagonally down
across the back and swoops forward over one hipbone to continue diagonally
downward in front again ... darling, help me with my zipper, won't you? At any
distance, it's invisible on this sleek sea creature.
Evidence accumulates that the
creation of sartorial beauty will never end. It will only shift ground. Talent
will arise to cut anew and drape afresh, to hang the mirror in another place,
to unsettle us again and again, and to keep reclothing us and righting our
minds.
