Why a high fashion dress costs as much as an apartment in Skopje
Haute Couture Week 2022/2023 in Paris is underway.
The very definition of haute couture is quite nebulous, not to mention how the whole fashion industry is shrouded in mystery.
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We almost never learn anything from the brands that create these creations, nor from the customers who buy them. Is the haute couture piece made exclusively for one model? Or are these just rumours? Can this creation be ordered? Are there standards for haute couture? Which houses meet these standards?
Giambattista Valli, Givenchy, Dior, Chanel make it impossible for mere mortals. Their haute couture creations cost as much as an apartment or a house. During Haute Couture Week in Paris where big designer names and fashion houses once again show incredible models, which have even more incredible sums.
A high-fashion designer dress can cost 9.000 euros for a daytime version, over 38.000 euros (cocktail dress) to 85.000 euros (evening dress).. Those are really impressive numbers, and yes, it is very expensive.
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Most of your wardrobe is made in factories and quickly, while high fashion pieces are treated like works of art. Legendary fashion designer Valentino said that tailors they take several hundred hours to make one dress, while a wedding dress, for example, takes about 1.000 hours. To have a better relationship – that's 41 days or about five weeks.
And one more detail – every piece of clothing is sewn by hand. That fashion "birth" takes place in one of the 11 design studios ("Chanel", "Dior", Gaultier,...), and each of them has to release 75 models a year to be able to say that it is "haute couture". . Such fashion houses employ about 5.000 people, of which 2.200 are tailors.
A haute couture piece must meet the strict rules of the French Ministry of Industry and the French Fashion Federation, while the fashion house must show two haute couture collections – in January and July.
What's interesting is that overpriced haute couture relies on the purchasing power of a ridiculously small clientele. Only 2.000 women in the world they buy dresses like this, and that's all 200 of them are loyal, regular customers.
As much as 60 percent of the customers are American women, and the remaining 40 are Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern ladies. About 1.500 haute couture dresses are sold annually. That is why it is often impossible for fashion houses to make a serious profit from them. All the glitz and glamor invested in such overpriced pieces is important to the brand and increases the sales of the more "ordinary" products they offer (perfumes, watches, bags...).
- High fashion collections are like a marketing tool that sells secondary products of that brand - perfumes, glasses, fashion accessories - said the American Nick Vereros.
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High fashion in numbers: Everything you need to know about the luxurious world of haute couture
We don't understand many things, and we don't trust most fashion lovers either.
Reason why the portal The Fashion Law collected a series of facts about this closed world of fashion.
These are the numbers they collected:
2 – the minimum number of trial samples for the client, according to the rules of the French Fashion Federation.
12 - the number of fashion houses that participated in Haute Couture Week in the spring/summer 2018 season, including Dior, Givenchy, Chanel...
15 – the minimum number of permanent employees in the atelier of the house, also according to the rules of the French Fashion Federation.
16 - the number of clients Jean Paul Gaultier had in 2009, according to Vanity Fair data.
45 - percentage of fashion creations from all sales of the Eli Sab brand, with a constant increase in demand from countries such as Turkey, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan...
50 - the number of looks that, according to the first rules of the French fashion federation, the designer had to present as part of his haute couture show.
100 – the number of designers employed in the Chanel haute couture collection for the spring/summer 2015 season.
135 – the number of hours it takes on average to make one Dior dress.
1945 years – the year the French Fashion Federation established a set of rules for haute couture shows. The changes were introduced only in 1992.
4.000 – that's roughly how many high fashion buyers there are in the entire world. Of them, 200 are regular customers, and among them are Daphne Guinness, Lena Perminova, Ulyana Sergenko and Queen Rania of Jordan.
6.000 – the number of hours it took to create the final look for the Ralph & Russo Spring/Summer 2016 show.
$50.000 – $300.000 – the price of a haute couture creation, according to the BBC.
$ 1.000.000 – a price that a Dior wedding dress can achieve, according to Reuters.
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