Week 1 BOC: Haute Couture

Haute Couture comes from the french phrase, "high fashion." The word couture means dress-making, sewing, or needlework and the word Haute means elegant or high quality. When you combine the two words and their meanings you get an elegant artistry with the fashioing of garments. When each piece of garment is made it is unique to the person wearing it. Also, the couture house sells only very limited percentage of garments to a small number of contracted customers. The profits from this are negligible and usually amount to less than 10% of the gross profits of the couture name or even sometimes a loss. In the book Best Business Practices for Photographers, John Harrington states that "What you do for your earned revenue is your choice as well. However, over a period of time, what you earn must exceed what it costs to earn it-- not just now, but projected into the future as well" (2). So, why is Haute Couture the exception to this common business practice? It is called, "selling a dream." Fashion shows attract huge media attention and gains enormous publicity for the couture houses. A dream of "chic cachet, of beauty, desirability and exclusiveness" that the ordinary person can buy into. How I see it as well is a way for an artist to show off their work. Often you go to an art museum and look at these pieces of work that no one would put up in their house, yet people will look at them for hours trying to understand why the artist chose the composition they did. It simply is an artists work!