Two floors above the apartment where legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel once lived and worked, women still sit in rows at work tables stitching handmade clothes for an elite clientele.
From the vantage point of the sunny studio, which looks out on the slate rooftops of Paris, it would be easy to assume that nothing much has changed in the haute couture industry since Chanel reigned supreme in the Roaring `20s.
But while the Chanel workroom seems untouched by time, the industry itself is being torn apart at the seams. Skeptics predict it will disappear altogether in 10 years.
Pierre Berg, president of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, ruffled a lot of feathers in Paris last summer when he boldly declared that haute couture was dying. Some industry insiders say his comments only reflect a looming crisis within YSL, where there is no obvious successor to designer Saint Laurent, who is in questionable health.
A look at the numbers
But there`s no denying the changed circumstances of the Paris-based industry. Where once 300,000 women could be counted on to purchase handmade clothing, now only about 2,000 worldwide are willing to part with upward of $14,000 for a suit or dress. And their numbers are dwindling.
Paris has 21 registered haute couture houses, but not one makes money from selling handmade clothing, once their primary activity. Profits now come from ready-to-wear collections or the accessories, cosmetics and perfumes that bear designer logos.
Even former French Prime Minister Edith Cresson, who buys her haute couture wardrobe from design house Torrente, had warned the industry it must adapt to survive. Her government had appointed a commission to find out how this can be done.
”At the moment, haute couture is losing as much money as it is bringing in in sales,” says Sylvain Massot, an analyst with Morgan Stanley
International.
Exact figures are hard to come by because many of the houses are privately owned and the public companies lump haute couture in with their other lines of business.
What`s haute, what`s not
The precise definition of what constitutes haute couture-and what doesn`t-is a matter of French law. To qualify, fashion houses must maintain workshops in Paris employing a minimum of 20 people. Collections must be presented each spring and summer with a minimum of 75 garments. And the collections must be shown to private customers at least 45 times a year on live models.
All this places burdens on the haute couture operators, but only the last rule seems under pressure. Various houses are using videotapes rather than live models for private showings.
Jacques Mouclier, president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, waves a weary hand when it`s suggested that his 21 members are on their last legs.
”Forty-five years ago when I started, people said luxury is finished,”
the elegant, elderly gentleman says in an interview in his office on the Faubourg Saint Honor. ”Every 10 years it comes up again. It`s a sort of a sickness.”
Apart from anything else, the twice-yearly showings of haute couture collections provide a tremendous advertising vehicle for the fashion industry as 1,500 journalists, photographers and camera men descend on Paris.
Mouclier calls it ”free advertising,” but given that mounting a collection costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million, the advertising is not without cost.
”If you consider the collection is part of the publicity budget, it`s not losing money,” says Chanel spokeswoman Catherine Duquesnoy Rivire.
She says the collections add to the Chanel cachet, which purchasers of ready-to-wear, perfume and accessories feel they`re sharing when they buy anything bearing the famous double-C logo.
One haute couture house, Pierre Balmain, found that this link is not as tenuous as it might seem. Balmain tried to stop presenting haute couture collections several years ago and was promptly sued by its licencees, who thought this undermined the desirability of the ready-to-wear collection. Balmain quickly reversed course.
Trickle-down theory
Aside from selling perfume and ready-to-wear, there`s another important function for haute couture, says Chanel`s Duquesnoy Rivire. It acts as an
”ideas laboratory” for everything else the house produces.
The more outrageous or audacious designs published in newspapers and magazines aren`t necessarily indicative of entire collections, she stresses. It`s just that the more conservative outfits don`t get as much coverage from a fashion press looking for novelty.
Sometimes only one element of an ensemble might be reproduced. For example, that tailored suit jacket worn with a tattered chiffon skirt on the catwalk could be paired later with a more sedate skirt for a client.
As a general rule of thumb, out of a collection of 80 outfits, 15 might later be ordered by clients and produced in the Chanel workrooms just off the Faubourg Saint Honore.
Once you start, you can`t stop
Chanel`s clients fall into two categories: older women who have always worn haute couture and don`t want to stop now; and women around 40 who are either successful in their own right or who are married to wealthy
businessmen.
”When you start to be dressed in haute couture, you can`t stop,” says Duquesnoy Rivire, making it sound like a very expensive addiction.
According to Regine Lemoine-Darthois, manager of upscale market researcher Upper Consultants, the wealthy individuals on whom haute couture depends are changing their buying patterns.
”About three years ago, they started to slow their purchases, especially their expensive purchases. Now they are looking for value for money.”
”That`s not a reason to think that haute coutue and the luxury goods industries are dying,” she adds. ”But they will only survive if clients think they are getting good value.”
She says wealthy Germans, who have always been bigger spenders than their Italian and French counterparts, are becoming more cautious and it`s having an impact on the luxury goods market. ”We say as a joke that one German is equal to two Italians is equal to three French in terms of spending.”
Fairy tales can come true
Lemoine-Darthois, whose company surveys 800 wealthy households every month for luxury goods companies like Chanel and Hermes, says she knows only three women who wear haute couture. Two are in their 70s and they buy two suits a year. And one is a large woman whose bulk is disguised when she is wearing haute couture. ”She is transformed,” Lemoine-Darthois says with enthusiam. ”It`s like a fairy tale.”
Duquesnoy Rivire says Chanel has made some concessions in order to keep its clients happy. Its seamstresses work faster so that the minimum two fittings for a garment can be done within days of each other.
Some clients never come to Paris at all. They send their measurements by fax and the outfit is hand-delivered to them. Fittings are done on the dressmaker`s dummy created for each client and altered for her over time.
Mouclier predicts the government commission, on which he sits, will not recommend major alterations to the rules under which haute couture houses must operate. The industry is thriving, he says, pointing to plans for a permanent haute couture display area in the Louvre.
If he sees the irony in consigning the industry to a museum, he doesn`t let on.
