“Haute Couture is a joke. Anyone who tells you it still matters is fantasising. You can see it dropping dead all around you. Nobody buys it any more. The prices are ridiculous. The rules for making it are nonsensical. It belongs to another age.”  Pierre Berge, former head of YSL.

Haute Couture shows in Paris rolled round again last week, with their relevance, more than ever being questioned. To qualify as couture, a garment must be entirely hand made by one of the Parisian houses approved by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Each house must employ at least 20 people, and show a minimum of 75 new looks a year. In 1946, there were 106, 18 in 1997 and now only 11 remain under these restrictions, as the craft and demand has diminished. It is a small, exclusive group of the world’s wealthiest women and their caprices, whom the entire industry rests upon. With the extortionate costs and miniscule clientele, no wonder it’s influence is questionable.

The purpose of couture has changed; for the big houses like Chanel, Dior and Givenchy still making it, it is now almost soley a marketing device to give the essence of luxury and aspiration to their profitable ready to wear, cosmetics and fragrance lines. After all, in today’s world of the disposable and instantaneous, where fashion is available for all over the internet, we need incredible things to fantasise about, even if we can’t afford a £50,000 dress, we need it to exist, to dream about…It is a little bit of glamour and tradition and skill from a bygone era, that must be cherished before it faces extinction.

So when last week in Paris, I found some how myself in the same room as Catherine Deneuve, Dita von Teese, Mario Testino, Jean Paul, Jean Charles, Anna and Grace, Carine and Emanuelle, Suzy, Tim, Alexandra, Sarah et al….my heroes and heroines, the creators and innovators, with the most amazing clothes, I felt priveleged to be part of this fantasy, and this surreal world that is fashion.

I found myself sitting next to an opinionated British journalist who just did not see the point of all this frivolity…but why does there need to be one? It’s art, it’s skill, it’s time, it’s money, and it’s beautiful!

XOXO