Section
The ateliers, the highest tier, and the economics of clothes nobody needs.
CoutureEstimates put the active haute couture clientele at roughly 4,000 to 5,000 people worldwide, down from around 20,000 after the New Look. Pieces run from €30,000 to well past €500,000 and the tier still rarely pays for itself, which is the whole point of it.
CoutureThe Chambre Syndicale runs three tiers: haute couture members, correspondents, and guests. Guests may call their work couture and are barred from calling it haute couture, and they wait two years before the appellation is even on the table.
CoutureParis haute couture ran July 6 to 9 with Pierpaolo Piccioli's Balenciaga debut and Duran Lantink's at Jean Paul Gaultier, alongside second outings from Blazy and Anderson. The clothes were sculptural. The subject was handover.
CoutureHis first Balenciaga couture, shown in the July week, answered the question everyone had about the appointment: he was not going to imitate what the house had been for the previous decade.