3 - chapter 3 haute couture

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III.HAUTE COUTURE

III.1.BOURGEOISIE FASHION

Bourgeoisie fully established itself in the society during the XIX century, and immediatelyfelt the need to find a specific social identity based on appearance: clothes. So we notice different

styles compared to farmers and workers, or aristocracy and other kinds of bourgeoisie as well.

That is why the XIX century has been a crucial period for fashion, also known as the

modern phase of fashion. A century that fostered changes and saw the outset of organized systems

of clothing production meant only for an elite of buyers who, however, were able to influence the

entire population.

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Haute couture was born in autumn 1857 in Paris, with the opening of the English atelier of

Charles Worth: he was the very first imposing his own style by proposing every year a newcollection of exposure dresses that buyers could see and choose and would have been tailored and

customized later on. It was thus created a system of production based on two different levels: on



one hand, the haute couture created its dress models for the high bourgeoisie; on the other, the

industrial tailoring imitated the same models for lower social classes.

III.2. THE DAWNING/OUTSET OF HAUTE COUTURE

At the beginning of the XX century, through the crucial role played by fashion magazines,

we witnessed a further change in the clothing system, that is forced to reorganize itself and present

new collection every 6 months. Vogue magazine, founded at the end of 1800, has progressively

become the main reference point, a sort of pillar in the sector, as for presenting new dresses and

collections introducing photography. The main stylist of the beginning of 1900 is Paul Poiret,

imposing himself thanks to the creation of easy-making and comfortable dresses, of clear oriental

inspiration: he imposed trousers for women, shortened skirts, but above all reduced the use of the

bustière, symbol of submissions that repressed the body. He did so to interpret the social

emancipation desire of his clients, thus changing the female silhouette, although being still too

attached to a kind of aesthetic that is too close to the Liberty movement.

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At a certain point people felt the need to give a more effective interpretation to the

revolutionary phase that was affecting fashion in the early 1900’s: during the 1920’s, for instance,

every single woman – so not only aristocracy or bourgeoisie – started having a social life and

wanted to be free to express her own style according to the emancipation movements that were

rising in that specific period, and all this gave birth to a very important liberalization process of

women’s personality and body.

The First World War was fundamental in this direction as often women found themselves

carrying out activities that were usually carried out by men that had left to join the army. So



women, replacing men in factories and farming activities had to wear more comfortable and

functional dresses, closer to men clothing. So women could be no longer considered weak and

vulnerable as during the 1800, but they had to give a strong and dynamic image: so the strong

connection existing between the body and clothing has been a decisive impulse towards the

liberalization of fashion, uncovering more and more the body and adopting a manly hair cut also

known as à la garçonne, presented in Paris in 1924, that made them look like unshaped teenagers.

Jean Patou and, even more, Gabrielle Chanel – also known as Coco played a fundamental role for

the modernization of women clothing. Patou was the first stylist ever putting his name on his

creations and in 1930 he presents the cologne “Joy”, still considered one of the best classic

fragrances.

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III.3. COCO CHANEL: THE BIRTH OF CHIC

Coco Chanel was able to interpret women’s emancipation process in the world of fashion –

born in the first decades of the 1900 – by making dresses more masculine, stricter and practical. She

decides to completely abandon the bustier and replace it with minimal tailleurs, shirts, pull overs,

ties, trousers, the so-called à cloche hats, short and tailored fit dresses made with practical and

comfortable fabrics, but also poor ones such as jersey, using neutral colors as black, blue, white and



replacing jewels with flashy trinkets. Coco Chanel’s style was probably influenced by her own

biography: first of all, her humble origins of a child who had lost her mother and was abandoned in

a convent by her father; she was raised by nuns who taught her that a young lady had to behave in a

sober and austere way.

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Her experience as a young singer in concert cafès helped her get to know several important

people in the art field, such as Max Jacov, Pierre Reverdy, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Igor

Stravinskij, and they were all so poor that Coco herself used to keep them. So on one hand Coco

was influenced by the cubist aesthetic, characterized by vertical and horizontal lines, angular plans

and bidimentional geometries; and on the other hand by the modern movement, characterized by a

rejection of decorations but rather a promotion of objects’ linearity and functionality.

We have to bear in mind also the influences that Coco received by her lovers as Arthur

“Boy” Capel that had adopted a style appearantly poor and neglected but in reality rich in details

according to the tastes of the English dandies who preferred vintage clothes to new clothes and who

said that the real “elegance” was to be unnoticed to flaunt one’s intelligence. The birth of a new

social context is fundamental for the development of Chanel; in fact, the expansion of workers gives



visibility to work uniforms. In addition, the spread of new sports such as tennis, swimming, cycling,

skying and horse-back riding made it possible to create some pieces of clothing proper to these

purposes.

Coco Chanel knew how to present helself as the best interpreter of modern women’s

elegance, often wearing her own creations, following for her haute couture dresses the guidelines of

luxury, always detaching from the aristocratic emphasis thanks to her discreet and not flaunting

style that was still able to communicate social prestige through the attention given to details.

During her career, Chanel has made of modernity her core point, accepting, for example, to

dress up Hollywood stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson during the

30’s, being the forerunner of all those stylists who decided to cooperate with the Cinema and

promote modernity through it.

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Chanel also understood the importance of the make-up industry and colognes to firm up the

image of the brand and increase incomes. In fact, today, the cologne Chanel N°5 – launched by

Coco in 1921 and based on a previous project of the perfumer Grasse Ernest Beaux that mixes

flower scents with new sintetic substances for the first time - is still one of the most sold and

evergreen colognes on a worldwide level, while the income of Chanel make up products makes up

for more than 90% of the maison’s total income. Witnessing the rapid changings in fashion after the

Second World War, Chanel was able to reinvent her style offering reassuring dresses to women

suffering from the aftermath of WWII, as the famous tailleurs worn by many women publically

exposed at that time, such as Jacqueline Kennedy or Grace of Monaco. In fact, if during the first

decades of the 1900 Coco’s creations were considered revolutionary, as the time went by her

proposals were more and more based on baroc and classic styles, with a simple silhouette enriched

by flashy details, such as buttons, chain and jewels, and it’s right for this reason that Roland Barthes

uses the word chic to define the style just inaugurated by Chanel.

Chanel had to update her reference values, she had to stop supporting women’s

emancipation and start idealizing woman’s figure through an abstract, ethereal and inmaterial

vision. This means that the classic influence affected Chanel’s aesthetics more and more, heavily

contributing to the connotation of an evergreen brand all over the world.

III.4. FASHION DURING THE 1930’S

The original and transgressive style of Elsa Schiaparelli was counterposed to Chanel’s

linearity. With the opening in Paris of the Atelier Pour le Sport in 1924 by Elsa, new pullovers with

very big trompe-l’oeil bows were launched, as well as t-shirts decorated with fishes, US marine

corp-style tattoos, zodiac signs and human skeleton’s bones. But Elsa was particularly attracted by

visual and figurative arts, especially by the surrealistic movement, and thus promotes cooperations

with important artists such as Salvador Dalì, with whom she tailores a tailleur with drawers instead

of pockets, just like Dali did in his Venus de Milo with drawers in 1936.



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In 1938 she also launches Shocking, a parfume with the bottle shaped as the silhouette of a

woman, which name recalled her invention of the “Shocking Pink”, a color she invented, inspired to

the shades of pink used in the pictures of Bébé Bérard, a famous painter. A very important

phenomenon for the development of fashion in those years was the opening of “cinemas” in big

American malls, where you could find models of dresses worne by Hollywood cinema stars. The

cinema thus becomes a fundamental tool in the creation and setting up of new clothing trends, such

as the imposition of the brand new, middle length haircut à la page, which definitely replaces the

old school haircut à la garçonne.

Salvatore Ferragamo was working in Hollywood and showed himself gifted when it came to

fashion: he knew how to use Italy’s symbols, synonym of quality and art, to make his products

more desirable to American clients. That is why he decided to go back to Italy, take advantage of

the world famous handcrafts and write “Florence” on the label, aware of Americans’ passion for

this city. Ferragamo’s boom occurred in 1937 with the launch of the so-called wedge heel and, ten

years later, of the invisible sandal characterized by weaved nylon strings.

III.5. DIOR AND THE FRENCH HAUTE COUTURE IN THE AFTERMATH OF WWII

When Paris was invaded by German troops, the activity of the haute couture boosting center

was blocked for four years but, from August 1944, the city started to recover. The launch of the first

collection of Christian Dior was characterized by the opulency and the somptuosity of the so-called

new look , able to answer to the luxury and elegance needs emerged after the repression of WWII.

Dior, as well as Chanel, owns part of his fame to the cinema and to his role as costume designer

during the climax of the cinema noir that not only saw Hollywood adopting a more realistic



language, but also introducing the dark ladies or femmes fatales, beautiful and seductive but also

cruel and ruthless women.

Thanks to the great fame of Dior, after WWII French Haute Couture received the right boost

that allowed it to the be the forerunner of fashion trends and be among the top 5 world brands

during the 1950’s with couturiers such as Balenciaga, Givenchy and Balmain.

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3 - chapter 3 haute couture

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