Haute Couture vs Pret-a-Porter – High Fashion Revealed

by Monica Camel

These high and mighty terms of the fashion industry spin like strands of silk in heated air above our heads. We look longingly, but at what? I fear that for the average man and woman these two fashion and style icons that emerged from France in the past century mean little, while the true significance of the contribution to the art of fashion is unparalleled in many ways.

Let’s start by looking at what these terms mean in literal translation and then what they have come to mean as iconic words and images in the world of fashion.

Haute Couture

Haute Couture is the most rarefied of all fashion categories. Literally, Haute means elevated or high and Couture means dressmaker. Thus we get High Dressmaker or High Fashion. Haute Couture got it’s start in France at the very beginning of the 20th century and has remained a predominantly French phenomenon to this day.

Webster’s definition of Haute Couture is very simple “1. high fashion; the most fashionable, expensive, and exclusive designer clothing. 2. the designers or dressmaking establishments that produce high fashion, collectively.”

This captures only the basics, Haute Couture is so specialized that it can mean many different things. To start with it is the “most expensive” fashion around, commanding hefty price tags between $30,000 to $100,000+. Of course this level of expense is only for the top fashion designers and houses, not many in the fashion world can charge such high amounts. There are many small designers in the US and abroad who create one of a kind pieces that sell in a much more reasonable range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. But if your looking for some Dior couture, say for your Oscar’s appearance, plan to pay through the nose.

Exclusive Fashion

To be sure, prêt-a-porter fashion has a certain level of exclusivity, but couture is the only 100% unique fashion category. Each couture piece is unique, and constructed by only the finest artisans in each production category. In classic couture based in France designers utilize a dwindling but highly skilled set of old-school artisans who use only the finest, most costly, and most time consuming materials and methods for construction.

France is the birthplace and contemporary heartland of Haute Couture. It has been described as the ultimate fashion laboratory because of its unique history of developing the highly-skilled artisans that produce the majority of custom made elements that outfit almost all of the fashion pieces found at the highest end of couture spectrum.

French Couture and Fournisseurs

Many of the top fashion houses like Dior, Chanel, Lacroix, Hash, Armani, Saab and a few others employ the handful of fournisseurs, or outside workshops, to create the custom ribbons, lace, gloves, hats, shoes, buttons, jewelry, feathers, flowers, fabric, leather, embroidery that consumers and designers alike demand for these one of a kind creations.

Recently these workshops have dwindled in number and size leaving many design houses fearing the disappearance of this critical pool of fashion skill and knowledge. This fear has prompted some such design houses such as Chanel and Dior to start buying up the these outside fashion workshops to preserve the knowledge and equipment that makes France the preeminent fashion lab in the world. Fortunately the fashion houses are not trying to gain exclusivity of process or product and share in the resources they have aquired. In large part anyone can order custom productions from any of these previously independent fashion suppliers.

Artistry and Exclusivity in Fashion

Uniqueness and supreme quality is one aspect of the exclusivity of these fashions, but the creativity that is allow to emerge in each piece is the true mark of exclusiveness. The artistry of the fashion designer is set free in a couture collection, and they often produce personal, political, and social expressions as a painter or sculptor would. One need only witness the new Dior collection by Galliano to see the full artistic expression that can emerge in couture fashion.

In the above, realized for the Spring/Summer ’06 Dior Couture Collection, Galliano is attempting to explore the social and political mood of France. Which in the summer of ’05, the time when Galliano began work on this collection, saw the largest social unrest since the student riots of ’68. In the weeks of violent and destructive rioting Galliano saw the movements of revolution and a sea change in public sentiment. He bravely brought this influence to bear on this highest art of fashion.

The Highest Reflection of Self in Fashion

Haute Couture is also the realm of fashion that becomes most personal for the wearer of the clothes. The person who purchases a Couture gown or suit usually develops a report with the designer and the designer in turn takes into account not only body shape and size, but also the shape and size of each customers personality. Making each work to suit a clients desires and personal attributes.

For me, the art in Couture is the most important aspect of coming to understand it. This is high art, not just clothes. In Couture, we can lose ourselves and find a valid expression of culture, politics, art and most importantly ourselves.

The Common Cousin – Prêt-a-Porter

The more common of the two is prêt-a-porter, which, just as the movie would indicate, means ready-to-wear. This designation is meant to say to the public “anybody could wear items from this collection, on a daily basis, they’re ready to go”. Not to indicate that the collections released as prêt-a-porter have any aire of banality to them, they are of fine quality and craftsmanship well above the apparel one would find at a Wal-Mart or a Kohl’s.

Oxford American Dictionaries gives this definition of prêt-a-porter: “adjective (of designer clothes) sold ready-to-wear as opposed to made to measure. Noun designer clothes sold ready-to-wear. Origin French, literally ‘ready-to-wear’”.

These items are mass-producible, their designs can be distilled down into parts that can be reproduced on an assembly line, albeit a very high-quality assembly line. Almost every fashion designer or house produces a ready-to-wear collection for each season. And while every apparel producer makes clothing ready to wear, it would be a misnomer to call just anything prêt-a-porter.

Blurring the Lines of Fashion

To give this designation to a fashion usually indicates that it is still fairly pricey (in the $500-$10,000 range) and designed by a well respected and skilled designer. Although the preciseness of the definition is becoming more and more blurred as designers have begun in recent years to design clothes for stores like Target and Kmart. Cynthia Crowley and Isaac Mizrahi both design Target lines that appear on some of the same runway’s as $1,000+ lines. Oscar de la Renta, Michael Kors, and many other designers also produce lower budget lines whose fashionable items retail for between $20-150.

This shift in production and consumption of fashion is all having a tremendous impact on the concept of exclusivity when it comes to design. The finest materials and production standards are still reserved for the priciest items, but choice designer names and the looks that go with them are no longer out of reach for most consumers. And I for one think this is great both for the health of the fashion industry and the ability to give fashion fanatics an opportunity to buy into some of the better designs out there.

These are five typical examples of prêt-a-porter design from Chanel, Christian Dior, Armani, Lacroix, and Valentino. All of whom have produced couture lines as well the spring/summer ’06 period.

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