All Dressed up & Somewhere to Go...Part II

Middle Eastern weddings continue to provide a large source of revenue for Paris’ couture houses, where the bride and the entire wedding party are often dressed in elaborate ball gowns. This also extends to the guests attending such events. Many Arab couture clients regularly order 3-4 ball gowns each season for such events on their social calendar.

Clockwise top left: Investcorp founder Nemir Kirdar & his wife long time couture client Nada Kirdar commissioned Christian Lacroix to design wedding gowns for their daughters, Rena and Serra’s, weddings; A wedding gown being presented to clients at Chanel’s couture salon in Paris; A sumptuous wedding dress studded with tiny pearls created by Louis Féraud in 1992 for the wedding of Princess Fahda Bint Khaled Bin Abdul Rahman, great granddaughter of the late King Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia; Princess Firyal of Jordan commissioned Dior to create the outfits for her son’s wedding in Amman; Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missnad wife of the Amir of Qatar, shown here dressed in Jean-Louis Scherrer for her son’s wedding; A look from the Dior 2007 collection; Rena Sindi and her sister Serra photographed in New York; Princess Zahra Aga Khan, the only daughter of His Highness the Aga Khan, married Mr. Mark Boyden in England in a dress by Christian Lacroix. Amongst the wedding guests was Farah Diba, Iran’s former empress who fled Tehran in Valentino couture at the outbreak of the revolution.

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Couture’s New Clients…

After the czars, the maharajahs, the American Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and the sheikhs, where will couture find a new client source?

If the spring/summer 2007 season was anything to go by, there seems to be a new youthful clientele in the front rows, amongst them the Miller sisters, Alexandra Von Furstenberg and Marie-Chantal, wife of Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece, as well as the 20-something Angelique Hennessy of the cognac family, (Chanel’s youngest client is currently all of 24).

Soaring oil prices have also stroked Middle East interest, reviving a client base that had slumped in the early 1990s. The oil rally has seen some of those princesses return. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Khaled Hamad al-Thani from Qatar was a guest at the Dior show. “I am a client for my wife,” he said. Asked if more of his friends and colleagues would be buying haute couture after oil prices hit a record of $70 per barrel last year, he said, “I think so.”

By now it’s apparent that primary factor driving Couture sales is vast new wealth, especially in emerging markets like India and Eastern Europe, as well as Abu Dhabi, and the United Arab Emirates. The presence of a large Arab clientele was also echoed by Marco Gobbetti, the CEO of Givenchy. "Lately, the Middle East has been a significant market that has grown very quickly," he says. Even Giancarlo Giammetti of Valentino has noticed the upswing in couture clients. "There is such a new wealth in the world in countries you didn't expect to explode so much. These people are dressing almost all the time in Couture, so they're able to order huge amounts of clothes,” noted Giammetti.

But the most telling sign of a couture revival occurred back stage after the Dior show, where staff were overjoyed as yet another couture client - the 17-year-old daughter of a Russian millionaire - ordered seven bespoke Dior outfits. With an estimated 25 billionaires, along with a healthy number of 88,000 millionaires, the Russians have become couture’s newest customers, assuming the swagger and style of the oil sheikhs of the 1970’s in their spending habits.

Furthermore Armani Privé has taken to flying its seamstresses to clients for in-person fittings, where a five-dress-per-season order is considered the minimum to qualify for such elite customer service. While Valentino Couture boasts one client who orders a mindboggling 25 to 30 new dresses each season. “The demand for handmade, exclusive, personalized fashion designs for a small but important number of women is significant and growing,” notes Robert Triefus, Armani’s executive VP of PR.

But despite the growing number of clients at several of the couture houses, it is widely believed that the couture label with the most customers is neither Chanel, Valentino, or Dior for that matter, but the lesser-known Lebanese designer Elie Saab, whose front row is usually packed with glamorous Saudi princesses. “Haute Couture is the ultimate refinement," said Nayla Lati, a member of a prominent Beirut banking family who was seated front row at Saab's show.

Then there are the first lady’s, queens and royal consorts who rely upon the couture as a means of projecting a confident and sophisticated image in their increasingly public lives. Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missnad, wife of the Emir of Qatar, for instance, regularly calls upon the Houses of Dior, Scherrer, Gaultier, and Chanel to outfit her for foreign visits and the state functions she attends as part of her role as a roving ambassador for the Emirate. While the young Queen of Morocco, Lalla Salma, who is best know for the sumptuously embroidered caftans she dons for royal banquets, is often seen in immaculately tailored Valentino couture outfits for other official functions.

The couture houses that remain insist they are making money. Chanel, which has arguably of the largest haute couture businesses, has reported a 50 per cent increase in sales for the past two years. Its couture division has experienced such significant growth that it now employs 120 workers in three ateliers to keep up with orders. “The couture was profitable if you took out the cost of the presentation of the show”, said Francoise Montenay, the chief executive and president of Chanel, who added that, "What happens is that when they have tasted couture, they cannot live without it - if they still have the money."

In 2005, when Giorgio Armani entered the rarified world of Haute Couture, industry insiders questioned the decision. But according to Armani’s Triefus, the Privé line has experienced tremendous “interest and growth,” pointing out that their roster of European and British clients are now ordering an impressive average of three Armani Privé ensembles each season. At Christian Dior Couture, sales doubled with the previous January collection, while the House of Lacroix has experienced similar growth. "Last year was up about 25 to 30 percent and this year, so far, is running slightly higher,” agrees Nicolas Topiol, president of Christian Lacroix. "Couture is very vibrant."

“My feeling is that the pendulum is swinging back to Couture,” says Jean Paul Gaultier president, Christophe Caillaud. “Rich clients are willing to have exclusive and exceptional products: made-to-measure and personalized. They want to have goods adapted to their specific needs and this includes, or course, Couture.”

Yet despite a rising interest in the craft, the market for haute couture is becoming less French every day. For decades, couture clients used to buy their haute-couture suits and ball gowns directly at the fashion houses in Paris. But many of the couture houses have recognized that if wealthy clients from emerging markets such as India and the Far East can't or won't come to the shows, then the designers will take their collections on the road. The latest to do so were Chanel and Georgio Armani, who both reprised their Paris shows in Hong Kong and New Delhi in a bid to capture a new clientele.

During Dior’s 60th anniversary couture show held on the grounds of Versailles, one executive said that they expected to sell many of the 45 embroidered gowns coming down the runway at that night's show. The catch was that such transactions would not be taking place in Paris, but at a showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Officials at Valentino have also confirmed that they regularly fly to Moscow and Dubai to meet clients, since only 10% of clients still buy the label's signature couture gowns through its Paris showroom.

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Couture’s New Clients…Part II

Couture’s new clientele: In recent years haute couture has witnessed a surge in clients, many of them young, in their 20’s and 30’s. For some it is their first experience wearing couture, while others have acquired a taste for it through their mother’s and friends who were already established customers. Most new customers will gain entrance into a couture house through an introduction by an already established client.

Top left clockwise: Sheetal Mafatlal represents a new Indian couture clientele and was instrumental in opening the first Valentino boutique in India; Valentino with the young couture client Eugenia Niarchos; In a rare moment, young Arab clients from the Gulf caught on film after the Gaultier Paris show, with Catherine Deneuve being interviewed in the foreground; New York client Helen Lee Schifter in Dior haute couture; Princess Lalla Soukaïna of Morroco represents a young Middle Eastern couture customer; Princess Rosario of Bulgaria is a regular customer at Valentino; Princess Charlotte, Princess Caroline of Monaco’s daughter, has acquired her mother’s taste for Chanel haute couture; Indian clients seated at a Dior couture show; Anh Duong and Rena Sindi were both married in couture wedding gowns by Christian Lacroix, Sindi’s mother is Nada Kirdar who is a prominent couture customer; Fabiola Beracasa is no stranger to the world haute couture with an illustrious pedigree to match. Her mother Veronica Hearst was born in Monte Carlo to Princess Fatemah Khanoum and the Dutch aristocrat Wilhelmus de Gruyter and was first fitted for Balenciaga couture at the age of 16. As a child Fabiola attended many of her mother’s fittings at Valentino and Dior and reputedly has 14 closets of couture and countless more through her mother. Seen here wearing a Givenchy couture ball gown from Spring 2007; When the American heiress Marie-Chantal Miller married Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece in London in 1995, not only did she wear a couture gown by Valentino, made with ten types of lace, but dozens in the wedding party wore Valentino as well. Today she is still a loyal customer at the House, shown here wearing a Balmain couture gown from Fall 2001.

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Toujours Couture? Maybe oui, Maybe non

Several years ago the famously cranky Pierre Berge proclaimed that haute couture would die after the retirement of Yves Saint Laurent. Instead it flourished with the additions of John Galliano at Dior and Alexander McQueen, then at Givenchy. Couture, like other industries seems to go through cycles, ups and downs that inevitably bring changes to the current system.

In January Valentino will present his final couture collection in Paris. But for all the talk of a diminishing schedule and the inevitable demise of haute couture, young and new talent is still emerging each season. Givenchy, for example, is now presided over by the young designer Riccardo Tisci, who in a relatively short period of time has established a new aesthetic for the house that is attracting a modern clientele in tune with his mournfully romantic gothic confections. According to Tisci, “When I arrived we had five customers. Now we have 29.” Furthermore the number of young couture clients seems to be growing as Tisci points out, “I was in Cannes last year for the film festival and I saw this Russian girl, very beautiful, 23 years old. It was amazing to see her in my dress — a green dress from the last show, with the shoes and the bag and everything. It’s like the Arabic countries. Some of the princes have, like, 10 daughters, and they all dress in couture. It’s funny, they all come.”

While some houses have closed, others are keen to join the couture ranks. The latest couture collections shown in Paris last July witnessed the debut of two new couture houses on the official calendar. There is Anne Valerie Hash (who in the past presented her ready-to-wear collection during couture week) and Stéphane Roland, who after years of successfully designing for Jean Louis Scherrer decided to set up his own house, attracting both an established and newer clientele. Giorgio Armani is also a more recent inductee. Having made his money in the ready-to-wear revolution of the 1970s, the Italian designer introduced Giorgio Armani Privé at the Paris shows as one of 10 guest fashion houses on the couture schedule, which includes the American Ralph Rucci and the Lebanese designer Elie Saab.

There are currently ten designers qualified to show their made-to-measure collections in Paris in the haute couture show series, and countless other designer who show outside the schedule. Though you wouldn’t know this based on the scant coverage given to them in fashion publications and online, where the Big 5 (Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Lacroix, and Gaultier) receive the most coverage, thus leaving people with the impression that the couture has dwindled to a handful of designers.

Names like Adeline Andre, Frank Sorbier, Carven and Dominique Sirop don't mean much beyond Europe and to those in the know, but they all have growing customer lists for their meticulously constructed outfits. Furthermore, discovering new couture ateliers that are under the radar has also become a competitive sport amongst some couture customers. These include the couturiers Maurizio Galante, Richard René and Stéphane Mahéas amongst others.

Then there is the elusive Belgian designer Martin Margiela, whose Maison Martin Margiela line has had a subtly more subversive effect on the couture establishment. For this understated house, nothing as unseemly as models strutting down a catwalk is required. The company's most expensive line - prices range from a relatively affordable $4,000 to $14,000 for limited edition garments - has been presented to small groups of clients and journalists in a salon as modest and unassuming as the clothes are innovative. Stripped of ostentation and the flouting of elitist values, his entirely hand-crafted and exclusive clothing appears to reflect the contemporary lives of a new generation of couture customers.

Margiela, for all his anti-establishment rhetoric, serves to illustrate that there will always be the creative talent and clients for couture. But its future ultimately lies in the hands of the treasured "petites mains," the artisans who labor in workshops doing the elaborate handwork that transforms a designer's sketches into reality. Although it is not known how many artisans still work in France's haute couture industry, what is certain is that their numbers are dwindling. Especially diminished are the "fournisseurs," the artisans who work in outside workshops like Lesage, which specializes in the craft of embroidery and Lemarié, the “plumassier,” which provides the couture industry with feathers and ornamental flowers.

Yet many believe these skills are still central to French Fashion and to view these craftsmen as quaint anachronisms would be a mistake. According to Valerie Steele, the chief curator of the Museum of FIT, "Fashion isn't necessarily about concept but about craftsmanship. You need the people to make the best ribbon, the best lace, the best hats. This is essential to keeping French fashion prestigious and creative."

To guarantee the future of at least some artisans, Chanel has bought six of the oldest workshops that no longer have heirs to run them. Having all of this expertise centralized in Paris allows designers to realize their creative dreams in ways unparalleled anywhere else in the world. "It's like a laboratory," said Lars Nilsson, the former designer for Nina Ricci in Paris, who was recently appointed as creative director at Gianfranco Ferré. "It's very Paris and quite unique because you have the connections and you can use two to three skills, like Lesage and Lemarié."

In the end haute couture maybe fashion at its most frivolous and excessive, but to many of its loyal clients it is also reminder that fashion-beyond the bottom line, the commercialism, and the designer handbags is still capable of conjuring up fantasy and mesmerizing others with its beauty and innovation. Here-in lies the secret behind haute couture’s large guilt doors, and the hope of many a couture customer from Riyadh to Sao Paulo is that those tiny hands will continue to spin luxurious dreams out of lace and tulle for many years to come.

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Paris Couture’s Secret Weapon: The “Fournisseurs”

It is the handwork that defines haute couture just as much as the three fittings required to create a garment for each client, and one of the secrets behind couture’s longevity are the "fournisseurs," the artisans who work in outside workshops that provide the couture industry with intricate embroideries, exotic feathers, custom shoes, gloves, and even millinery. But today they have become an endangered species. In St.-Junien, a small city that is the center of glove production in France, there were once 120 glove makers in the early 50's. Today only three remain; amongst them is Agnelle, a family-owned couture glove maker.

Right column:Lesage

Don’t be surprised to find the lights still blazing at 1 am from the attic space of a ramshackle five-storey building overlooked by the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, for this is the House of Lesage. In the weeks leading up to the haute couture collections, the House’s 45 embroiderers can be found defying the official French 35-hour workweek, hunched over wooden frames, feverishly stitching fantastical scenes out of sequins and crystal beads onto gossamer cloth. While lining the house’s tiny corridors are calico sheets stretched over wood frames, waiting to be embroidered. Rushing to finish some 50 or more designs for Paris’ haute couture house’s is a twice yearly event at France’s oldest embroidery house.

It has been called the most guarded asset of French fashion for over 50 years and at 77, François Lesage has presided over this 130-year-old establishment. He inherited it in 1949 from his father, who bought it from the embroiderer to Charles Frederick Worth, Albert Michonet, who founded the house in 1868. There is even a story of Francois, as a child, being bounced on the knee of Elsa Schiaparelli.

Inside this fabled house is a warren of tiny rooms housing drawers and boxes filled with more than 60 tons of beads, sequins, threads and 100-year-old jet. There is also a cluttered archive of over 65,000 swatches of embroidery, dated, labeled and stacked to the ceiling in brown cardboard boxes, which has seen its fair share of famous visitors searching for inspiration. John Galliano once holed himself up in the tiny room until midnight, with only whiskey and cigarettes for company, poring over chiffon swatches stitched with glass beads the size of sugar grains, produced in the late Twenties for Madeleine Vionnet; while Yves Saint Laurent himself picked through the Surrealist embroideries commissioned by Elsa Schiaparelli in the Thirties.

François Lesage readily admits that he’s incapable of stitching a single button, yet his true talent lies in his ability to translate what he calls “the fog in the brain of the designer." He once recalled a phone call from Yves Saint Laurent. "Francois, make me something that is like a chandelier," the designer instructed him. "Like a chandelier reflecting in the mirror on my bureau - with the sky of Paris in the background." Yet from such whimsical and tall orders, Lesage has been able to meet a designer’s demands for over fifty years.

According to Monsieur Lesage there were once about 10,000 embroiderers employed in France’s haute couture industry. Today that number has dwindled to 200.


Center column: Lemarié

Behind the huge graffiti-covered doors of a shabby but grand building on Paris’ Rue du Faubourg St.-Denis lies a world of rare and exotic feather’s. It was here in 1880, that the “plumassier” André Lemarié’s grandmother set up shop to supply feathers to the couture houses. At the time, this gritty street near the Gare du Nord was once lined with similar establishments. 60 years ago there were 300 people employed in the craft, but today the atelier is the sole remaining feather workshop on the street and one of a handful still specializing in feather work in Paris. As their competitors closed their businesses one after the other, André Lemarié went about buying their stock of feathers, some from species no longer in existence.

Inside the atelier racks of boxes, stained tobacco-brown with age, are inscribed with labels that read "South African Ostrich," "Prince of Wales," or "exotic orchids." In one box amongst layers of tissue paper lies Lemarié’s last stock of Birds of Paradise, tanned in China in the days of the last emperor, their colors still vibrant.

Lemarié is also known for supplying the couture industry with luxurious ornamental flowers, most notably Chanel’s iconic Camellia. The House’s young artisans use centuries old hand tools, such as a heated tool that looks like a lollipop to curl the edges of petals. Together they produce more than 20,000 camellias annually for the House of Chanel; made out of silk, cotton, velvet, leather, and even vinyl.

When André Lemarié, who bares a striking resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock, retired in 2000, Eric Charles-Donatien became the firms’ new young director after having worked at Hermès sewing men’s wear. "When I got here, the use of materials was very ladylike," he said. "I mixed the flowers and feathers together. I made the designs more abstract and concentrated on texture." "To make something more edgy I've ruched organza and shredded the edges to make them look like feathers, so you're not really sure what you're looking at."

That modern approach seems to appeal to many of the couturiers working today. For his Fall 1997 haute couture collection, Jean Paul Gaultier asked Lemarié to create a shaggy fur coat entirely out of densely packed ostrich and marabou feather’s that became a highlight of his show.

Left column: Massaro

The House of Massaro has been creating luxurious footwear since its inception in 1894. Presided over today by Raymond Massaro, the 76 year old founder's grandson, both Massaro and his father worked with Coco Chanel to create her iconic two toned shoes, their tips looking as if they had been dipped in black ink.

Often dressed in his lab coat, Massaro still works closely with Karl Lagerfeld on the shoes for each new Chanel couture collection. "We are really craftsmen. The business is only 10 people. Everything is done here," he said pointing to the backroom where the workshop is located. "The head of the workshop has been with us more than 30 years. Once someone starts working here, they don't leave. It's the guarantee of good work. We're a tight-knit team," he added. Massaro's staff turns out more than 1,500 pairs of shoes a year, 150 of which are for Chanel.

Although none of the workshops were willing to disclose what they charge the fashion houses, Massaro has also attracted a steady stream of 3,000 regular clients. Although he doesn’t share his current client list, in the past these have included member of the Kennedy family, Elizabeth Taylor, the Duchess of Windsor, and Marlene Dietrich, for whom was created a beige pump with a jewel ball wrapped around the heel. Clients can expect to pay around $3,000 for a pair of shoes that require up to 40 hours of work to fabricate. "Everything is handmade," according to Massaro. "A shoemaker's work is to achieve perfection."

Entering his tiny shop with its racks lined with carefully crafted men's and women's shoes, clients can often create their own custom shoes designed to fit on their feet perfectly. An imprint of their foot is taken and a mould is made out of wood, which is kept for future orders. The allure of Massaro’s shoes is similar to that of an Haute couture garment in that it provides the client with opportunity to own something that is virtually unique to them alone.

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The Directrice of the Couture Salon

The House of Lacroix boasts a large roster of Middle Eastern clients attracted to his vibrant sense of color and innovative use of fabrics.

When Christian Lacroix presented his first couture collection under his own name on July 1987, it was the first haute couture house to open in Paris since Ungaro in 1965. Two emblems of Lacroix’s House were born that day: His now infamous puff skirt which was widely regarded for reinventing the ball gown in the late 20th century, and Marie Seznec his iconic model with an unlikely feature, grey hair. Yet Seznec is no ordinary model. Coming from a long line of seamstresses, when she first arrived in Paris from her native Brittany it was to study fashion design at the prestigious Studio Berçot. But it was the silver mane set a top a youthful face, which she had since the age of 15, that caught the eye of Lacroix and launched her modeling career. She modeled for him up until the early 90’s when she went on to become the “directrice” of his couture salon.

Today she is known for wielding a certain amount of influence at the House, not only as Lacroix’s right hand, but also because she runs its couture salon. She personally advises and works with each client on their purchases, frequently flying to New York or the Middle East with a seamstress for in-person fittings with important clients. She is also the individual to whom all new or perspective clients must approach in order to purchase a garment from the House.

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How They Wear it: Mouna Ayoub Part I

The Lebanese billionaire and socialite Mouna Ayoub was first bitten by the couture bug over 20 years ago when she married Nasser Al-Rashid, a Saudi businessman and advisor to the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. On her wedding day in 1979 she wore a couture gown in ivory lace designed by Jean-Louis Scherrer. After 18 years in Riyadh, living in relative seclusion as a wife and mother of five, she divorced her husband in 1996 and left Saudi Arabia to live in Paris, where she made a fortune in real estate.

In 1997 she bought the mega yacht Phocéa, once owned by French businessman Bernard Tapie, for a cool 56.5 million Euros. Although this sprawling boat already boasted luxurious interiors and amenities, she sunk into it a further 18.25 million Euros in upgrades. To finance this undertaking she sold a portion of her jewels at Sotheby’s, which included the world’s largest yellow diamond, known as the Mouna diamond. Today the Phocéa has become her second home on which she travels around the world. The boat can often be found moored off the coast of many the world’s luxurious watering holes, including Cannes, Monte Carlo, and Marbella.

But Ms. Ayoub’s most lasting legacy may be her formidable haute couture collection which contains examples from every major couturier of the past 30 years. Numbering over 10,000 pieces, it is one of the largest haute couture collections in private hands today, and one which she continues to add pieces to each season (she is known to have bought 50 dresses in one year). From a fashion curator’s perspective what is impressive about her haul is that she is known to have collected only the most iconic pieces from a designer’s collection, regardless of their cost. These include Yves Saint Laurent’s famous 1988 dinner jacket covered in Van Gogh’s “Irises” by Lesage. The jacket, with its blue and green flower pattern traced in beads, had taken the Lesage studios 700 hours of handwork to complete. Even at the peak of their buying power in 1988, only ll haute couture customers purchased the completed “Irises” garment by Yves Saint Laurent, which was dubbed “the world’s most expensive cardigan.”Amongst Ayoub’s collection is also a stunning slender evening coat from Chanel’s autumn/winter 1996/1997 collection, which required 800 hours of work to entirely embroider it in the same pattern as the Chinese Coromandel screens found in Coco Chanel’s apartment.

What makes her collection even more exceptional is that Ayoub, unlike many regular clients, never alters a couturier’s original designs. Even if a dress came from a designer’s more “challenging” collections, you’re still able to see the couturier’s original concept in her pieces. She sites Jean Paul Gaultier as her current favorite couturier, although she makes it a point to frequent all the houses. One of her most impressive pieces from Gaultier is an evening gown from Spring 1999 that morphs from a denim bodice into a cascading fishtail of ostrich feathers, fading from indigo blue to a stonewashed white as they hit the floor.

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