Fashion of haute couture -- an escape from reality

Fashion of haute couture -- an escape from reality

Text by Dini S. Djalal and photos by P.J. Leo

JAKARTA (JP): Christian Dior, the late French designer who
spent the 1950s whittling a million socialite waists into his
hourglass New Look, once said, "Fashion comes from a dream, and
the dream is an escape from reality."

To dream and escape; how else to explain the world's love of
haute couture, regarded as "France's finest flower"? Couture is
fantasy at its most capricious, but also at its most beautiful.

The media seems to agree. It still shines its rose-tinted
spotlight on Parisian ateliers, reading out singing columns to
women whose annual incomes wouldn't fetch them even a slice of a
hand-sewn skirt.

And with the infusion of young hip designers into Paris' staid
salons, couture, once derided as a happy pill for middle-aged
matrons, has tip-toed back to the top of fashion's gilt-edged
pyramid. Despite burning great holes in its clients' Prada
purses, many couture houses -- Christian Lacroix, Balmain, Hanae
Mori -- now ring in record sales. In 1996, Chanel sold 13
colomander embroidered dresses, at US$175,000 per gown!

There's no denying the growing corpulence of the couture
feast, but its guests are shrinking. Christian Lacroix's
departure in 1988 from Jean Patou to open his own salon signaled
an era of closure. A third of couture houses, such as Lanvin, Guy
Laroche, Madame Gres, and Jean Patou, soon shut their rococo
doors.

Since those years of gloom, a shining knight has come to
couture's rescue. But did this modern-day swashbuckler gallop
past with romantic ideas of artistic endeavor?

Not quite; Bernard Arnault, owner since 1984 of luxury goods
giant LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesy), met couture's tailors
with a stiff-suited team of number-crunching troubleshooters.

Playing a game of couture chess, Arnault juggled fashion's
most notorious prodigal sons -- John Galliano, Alexander McQueen,
Marc Jacobs, designing for, respectively, Christian Dior,
Givenchy, Louis Vuitton -- to hype up his $5.9 billion empire.

The hype worked, sort of. In 1995, LVMH stock rose by 18
percent. That is the point: fashion hounds gossip that Arnault
hired these young designers only to create a buzz around the
label plastered on lucrative licenses, like leather goods and
perfumes.

Yet there's still a lot of press couture's youngbloods that
have to muster if they want to boost LVMH's ailing perfume
business, which saw sales dipping by two-thirds in 1996.

Frocks and cars

The publicity rounds have now arrived in Asia, thanks to BMW.
In an effort to sell BMWs as the automobile's haute couture
equivalent, the German luxury car giant is bringing five of
France's most glamorous exports -- Christian Lacroix, Emanuel
Ungaro, Givenchy, Jean Louis Scherrer, and Nina Ricci -- to six
of Asia's most affluent cities, giving Jakartans a rare chance to
see haute couture outside of Parisian ateliers.

At the Shangri-La on Thursday, the world's most luxurious
gowns shared the stage with luxury cars costing not much more.

Ask the average thespian which is the more frivolous
demonstration of conspicuous consumption, however, and he or she
will likely point to the gowns.

Only couture's 1,500 clients, some undoubtedly brandishing
Indonesian passports, are likely to disagree. Too bad, the
fashion world laments, that many of these clients are wives of
Middle East tycoons who rarely show these dressmaking
masterpieces before the public.

"You don't even see them wear the dresses," said Pia
Alisjahbana, owner of the Femina group of magazines.

The show scratched the shopping itch for many women, but it
also threw light on the state of Indonesian fashion.

Gushing with praise of the French imports, Pia remarked that,
comparatively, Indonesian designers, "still have a lot to learn",
adding that only local talents Peter Sie and Edward Hutabarat may
be considered up to par with the French contemporaries.

Designer Poppy Dharsono concedes the difference. "Technically,
(the French) are more sophisticated and advanced," said Poppy.

Sophisticated, and how. Gown after gown of extraordinary
craftsmanship shimmered past, meeting all expectations of couture
brilliance. Some of the creations were over-the-top -- Alexander
McQueen's floor-length padded sleeves prompted my neighbor to ask
"Is that a blanket?" -- but is that not the point? Everyday
clothes for real women can be found in any suburban mall. What
couture provides is a beautiful escape from the daily doldrums,
if only during an onstage glance.

"It's an art, really. I can't see anyone wearing those
dresses," commented an anonymous observer.

While she admitted not wanting the gowns -- "but the shoes are
nice!" -- she couldn't say the same of the aspirational women
abundant in the audience. "I can imagine these pudgy women going
to their dressmakers, saying I want this and that," she said.

Poor dressmakers; that's some challenge. These gowns require
days, weeks even, of excruciating work. Not merely manual toiling
either, but the equally taxing task of cutting the cloth in
gravity-defying ways. To top it all, a couturier must make the
woman, slim or stout, look absolutely perfect.

Perfect would be apt to describe the show's opening: a flesh-
colored lace concoction with asymmetric hem, courtesy of
Christian Lacroix. Dreadlocked John Galliano's shows are more
outrageous and make better copy, but it's likely Lacroix who will
inherit the couture crown. Lacroix's vivid palette and innovative
cut, coupled with a whimsical vision inspired by his Provencal
upbringing and fascination with 18th-century tailoring, show a
more mature designer.

Emanuel Ungaro, a rare independent couturier, showed less
opulence, but not less flesh. After opening with svelte Evita-
esque wrap-dresses, Ungaro scoured the jungle for technicolor
leopard prints -- in peekaboo chiffon. It's typical Ungaro
mayhem, but the sheerness may scare couture's conservative set.

And what do the society ladies have to say about Alexander
McQueen, now throned at that epitome of quiet chic Givenchy? Does
a professional trainer come with that suit, perhaps. Londoner
McQueen is no body-shy wallflower, as he proves with decolletage
more plunging than the Niagara Falls, corsets tighter than Scotch
tape, bolero jackets barely shielding breasts.

But oh, how the boy can sew. McQueen's military jackets look
simple, then the model turns to reveal a marvel of fabric
twisting, shaping, and embroidering. The shock value the media
loves so much is still there -- butterflies embedded in white
organza, horns on a top hat -- but so is the painstaking
craftsmanship, a craftsmanship only a dozen couturier tailors can
manifest from just a dream into reality.