(picture credit: Dvora via Vogue.co.uk)
I always found something fascinating in the “untouchable” (or rather detached?) version of “making fashion” – may it be to be because I’ve been over-fed with an (over the years immensely) increasing fashion week hype or the general availability of “everything I want right now” whenever wherever you decide to click around.
After discussing couture’s relevance about a year ago with a friend during a rather gloomy afternoon, I realized how long couture is already resting on surface as a slowly but thoroughly boiling topic – how much do we need it if the market is so specific?
From the Business of Fashion most recently taking couture as a topic over breakfast to a super old but lovely BBC documentary about the “real” couture buying ladies (so recommendable to watch!) to this crazy article by the Economist, which declared in 2002 that couture is “out of fashion”.
Realizing that 2002 was 13 (!) years ago, we can definitely say that things have changed.
Couture is well alive!
The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the slight but steady hype couture is undergoing during past years. I don’t only blame our spoiled appetite for “new fashion” season in, season out for this.
What seemed like the sleeping beauty of annual collections (beautiful, desirable, absolutely on top of exquisite fashion) has undeniably caught the limelight again.
Who could have imagined to see street style pictures appearing during couture shows 5 years ago? Although the whole street style phenomenon and all the buzz around who wore what stays persistently (and sometimes sadly..) as equally important as the shows themselves, I just LOVE looking at those shots by Dvora via Vogue.co.uk.
And it all of a sudden all makes sense to me – street style shots during fahion weeks ARE an essential “thing to look at” to the regular outside world; to those who might appreciate style and fashion but don’t necessarily work in fashion.
Street styles may disturb an increasing number of troupers during the regular fashion weeks. But meanwhile, it can indeed be a interesting, supportive tool. Not that couture depends on this too much as it proved over all the decades.
Especially, if a lot of well dressed people gather at one place (which, I admit, is mostly not the case during regular fashion week), I feel like we all tend to care a little more about what happens during couture week.
The elegance that swings with this special week somehow reflects in all outfits again. It seems like trash has been left out – at least from the pictures here – and taste is all that counts over there.
Even if couture stays selective, secretive and somewhat “out of this world”, exactly this and the people who represent this week gracefully are exactly what makes me love this part of fashion weeks the most at the very moment.
