Couture is an easy sell among the super rich
(Christian Lacroix Fall 2008 Couture)
So the Paris Couture Week wrapped up last week and there was some truly spectacular couture. Ever wonder who can afford this kind of clothes when a piece can demand $100,000, especially in the current credit crunch? The article in The Guardian A cut above the rest tells you all about it. Basically it’s the super rich who do not feel the credit crunch at all. The big fashion houses aren’t worried about the sales. And they are more than willing to pour money into the couture pieces because they see it as Research and Development, and experiment for the designer, as well as the image and the brand behind the name.
As if paying homage to the all-pervasive mood of impending economic meltdown, the models strutting down the catwalk in their teetering heels, tight skirts and Greta Garbo-style bonnets would have looked at home in a glamorous Hollywood movie of the 1930s. John Galliano, creative supremo at Dior, it appeared, had heard that the International Monetary Fund and George Soros are calling the year-long credit crunch the biggest financial shock to the global economy since the 1930s and come up with a haute couture response: Depression chic.
Quite wrong, of course, and not just because this is not yet a 1930s-style slump or anything like it. Any echoes of a bygone age are less to do with conjuring up memories of dole queues and soup kitchens than creating an impression of sumptuous glamour for a clientele so loaded that they are oblivious to the downturn.
Haute couture, quite simply, is a world apart. When asked for her views about the Armani collection, the young woman in the front row turned out to be a member of the Thai royal family. Her Royal Highness Princess Sirivannavari, 21, said she liked to come to the shows in Paris and Milan with an eye to buying couture shoes and bags, or perhaps an Armani jacket. “But I’m not the sort of person who shops all the time,” she added. That may well be true, but to be frank, she did not appear to be the sort of person losing sleep over the global food crisis either.
Continue reading the article here.
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