Haute Couture

Haute couture is high-fashion/high dressmaking fashion design genre,a protected term which can only be officially used by companies/designers that meet certain well-defined established standards set by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture. Contrary to mass production a “couture product” is time-consuming and is made from high-quality,expensive/custom-made fabric,sewn with extreme attention to perfect” detail and finish”.Look,fit and time take priority over the cost.This is because,it takes times to create a sophisticated product for an individual customes/comapny.There are many ready-to-wear, and mass market labels, that claim to produce haute couture (read knock-offs),when they do not,coz they dont meet the established standards.They are knock-offs ambitious of being labelled as haute-couture when they are no coz most of the people in general donot know the difference.Haute-couture is for the class(international celebrities) and not the mass.Amen!

Pret or ready-to-wear is for everybody.Along with attention to details,fabrics ,patterns target is to make it reach the market in time.Here standardized techniques are used,which donot require high-flown techniques as they do in couture collections.A designer/company usually produce mass market brands that can reach all kinds of customers.

When zips in clothing were tentatively introduced to Britain in the 1920s, people were worried about their reliability. To allay these fears, a huge zip was put on show at the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924. By the end of the exhibition, it had been zipped and unzipped three million times without catching.

list of top global fashion capitals:

Paris, London, Milan and New York, Tokyo,Hong Kong,Los Angeles, Melbourne,Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, and Sydney.

• False eyelashes were invented for Hollywood producer D.W. Griffith who wanted to enhance Seena Owen’s eyes for a 1916 film. The eyelashes were made out of real human hair.
• Today’s average woman uses 6 pounds of lipstick in a year but few of them know that one ingredient frequently used in manufacturing lipsticks is fish scales.
• The first pair of Doc Martens were made from old tires. Little was it known how popular these would become.
• Marie Antoinette was modest about her body so she wore gowns which buttoned all the way up to the top of the neck. She was so modest, in fact, that she wore these gowns even while bathing!
• Elizabeth I loved hats so much that she made it mandatory for all females over the age of 7 to wear a hat on Sundays and holidays. Anyone who refused to do so was stiffly fined.
• When Clark Gable was at the height of his career men’s wardrobes were often fashioned after his style. Once, while on screen he removed his coat and wasn’t wearing a vest. Immediately vests sales dropped by 40%.
• Victorian times promoted the hourglass figure causing women everywhere to wear tight corsets. Some women wore the corsets so tight that in doing so, they often broke ribs.
• In 1906 the first hair perms began, requiring clientele to sit for six hours or more while a dozen brass curlers were positioned. Each curler weighed close to 2 pounds making this an uncomfortable ritual at best.
• Men didn’t wear underwear until the 16th century.
• Designer Andre van Pier once created a bra adorned with 3,250 diamonds.
• Madonna’s “bullet bra” which she wore during her Blonde Ambition tour was designed based on an antique breastplate worn by Italian soldiers.

one of the world’s most innovative shoe designers, transforming the conventional look and fit of the shoe. He explored not only innovative design, but also the technical structure of the shoe.
Ferragamo acquired the basic skills of shoe production while apprenticed to the local village cobbler in Bonito.He emigrated from his home town in Naples to America, where he studied mass production in shoe design.  Owing to his excellent grounding in shoe design exploration and study, Ferragamo fully understood all the technical aspects of shoe production, the anatomy, and the balance of the foot. Eventually he set up in business in Santa Barbara, California, where his original, inventive designs caught the regard of many famous customers. Private commissions came from celebrities including Sophia Loren, Gloria Swanson, the Duchess of Windsor, and Audrey Hepburn.