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.