Who Can Call Themself a Couture Designer

Okay here it is. You can call yourself a couturier if you are a fashion designer. However you cannot call yourself a couture designer unless La Chamber Syndicale de la Couture has certified you as such. Here are the requirements. To join the ranks of the elite houses who create haute couture you must create a minimum of 50 new and original designs (a combination of day and evening wear) for each collection and you must show two times per year. Additionally you must employ at least 20 fulltime technicians in at least one atelier (workshop).


So when people tell you that they are going to the couture shows that means that they are traveling to Paris in January or July. So if they are headed to New York, Milan, Barcelona, London or anywhere else the designer show they go to may indeed have been created by someone who has been certified by La Chambre Syndicale; but, it will be a luxury ready to wear show. As I indicated in the last post, the only American designer who is actually certified by La Chambre is Ralph Rucci. His label, Chado is not couture. It is luxury pret-a-porter (ready-to wear).

There are even requirement about how the garments are made in order to consider the garments couture. Remember the snooty Emily in the Devil Wears Prada waxing dreamily about about getting to go to Paris in the fall and getting to wear couture? Well I laughed because she would have missed the couture shows by three months. Not only that, if the clothes she was given were already made and crafted mostly by machine, and she had not had at least one fitting it is not a couture garment. Couture garments must be at least 50% hand crafted.

These garments are for the most part created for private clients and tend to be one of a kind. So if you have a dress maker and that dress maker selects and redesigns a pattern and then creates a garment exclusively for you, your garment is couture. Sadly, your dressmaker, unless certified by La Chambre Syndical, is not. So as incredible a designer as Oscar de la Renta or Carolina Herrera or Donna Karan or Vera Wang or Calvin Klein may be, not one of them can elevate themselves to the ranks of the Couture; and they cannot claim to have couture houses.

That said, don't be discouraged. Those haute couture fashions do make their way to the ready to wear market. Designers flock to those shows in order to get inspiration. Some of them will even buy toiles or patterns, recut them or redesign them in some way and create their own designs for the ready to wear market. They can even get a licensing agreement to mass produce a design as-is.

And trust me, those couture designer are not crazy. They all design collections for the ready to wear shows and for the most part will have several labels at various price points in the market. The great ones actually design for several labels. They will also license a couture design to a manufacturer in order to put it in mass production.

So let's begin your fashion education and give you a glimpse of the types of questions you are going to find in the game the Fashion Project is creating. Name the three labels that Karl Lagerfeld currently oversees? Next, in addition to his own label, which design house does Jean Paul Gauthier run? Finally, upon the death of Christian Dior, who was selected to step in as the artistic director? Okay, one more; name the organization charged with the honor of safeguarding the legacy of Yves Saint Laurent.

How did you do on those? All of us with the Fashion Project are full of fashion factoids. For true fashionistas the game is going to be an incredible high. For those who love trivia, it will be the best and most stylish game on the planet. Stay tuned as we keep plugging away to get it off the ground. If you have any pull with any fashion photographers, we would love to hear from you. We need them to play with us to make this happen!

Mr. Lagerfeld oversees the collections created for Lagerfeld, Chanel and Fendi. He and Valentino are great friends and he would, on occasion, whip up a design or two for his buddy. And by the way, what is Valentino's last name?

Jean Paul Gauthier also oversees the collection created for Hermes. Sometimes I cannot even see Gauthier's influence in the Hermes collection. Maybe that is why he is so good and one of the past presidents of La Chambre Syndicale.

Upon the death of Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent was elevated to oversee the design house. And his (YSL's) legacy is lovingly safeguarded by La Fondation Pierre Berge.

a la prochaine

Debra