A $100,000 Dress, Perhaps, For the End of the World?
The economy is teetering. Currency is cratering. But the fanbase of extravagant haute couture? Ball gown big—and growing
“It’s really important for couture to be reflective of the times that we are in,” mused actor Julia Fox, vaping in a barely-there Mugler ensemble while in Paris during the haute couture shows this past week. She said that the collections she’d seen, including Schiaparelli and Iris van Herpen, felt relevant. And, to her, worth it—even if just to borrow: “People think couture is super overpriced, but the feeling that it gives you when you put it on is priceless. And in today’s day and age, you need to go where it feels good.”
Is Julia Fox—performative and charming—a modern-day Wallis Simpson, one of the most famous clotheshorses of all time? Ms. Simpson, the Duke of Windsor’s consort known for frequenting 1930s and ’40s couture houses such as Mainbocher and Balenciaga, was an invisible star of the new exhibition at Paris’ Musée des Arts Decoratifs, “Shocking! The Surreal World of Elsa Schiaparelli.” The show displays her most celebrated gown, a collaboration between Ms. Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí featuring an erotic lobster.
Opened the same day as buzzy designer Daniel Roseberry’s latest runway show for Maison Schiaparelli, the exhibition draws a line between Ms. Schiparelli’s avant-garde designs and Mr. Roseberry’s current pieces such as Lady Gaga’s inauguration gown. Mr. Roseberry is one of a new generation of designers pulling the couture arm of his business into the now, stocking his front row with a curated mix of personalities including playwright Jeremy O. Harris, filmmaker Janicza Bravo and actors Hunter Schafer and Natasha Lyonne.
Haute couture, with prices that begin around $6,000 for a blouse and hover in the $50,000 to $60,000 range for a dress, can go as high as $1 million for major pieces, remaining out of reach for most fashion fans. But its demographic and influence have broadened markedly. To qualify as haute couture, a designation registered with the French authorities in 1945 (with roots that go back to the 18th-century aristocracy), designers still follow strict rules. They must show at least 25 looks in Paris twice a year, hand-finishing looks on site in separate ateliers for suiting and flowy pieces. But within those parameters, the extravaganza is inching toward inclusivity.
Traditionally, couture clients were very wealthy, very thin, very white socialites like Lynn Wyatt, now 85, and the late Nan Kempner, who could afford the craft-intensive, made-to-measure fashion. These “social X-Rays,” as Tom Wolfe called them in his 1987 book “Bonfire of the Vanities,” would debark to Paris for the runway shows twice a year, Vuitton trunks in tow, to sit on small gilded chairs and choose scores of outfits from Dior or Chanel. These garments would then be molded perfectly to their bodies in a series of painstaking fittings by les petits mains, or “little hands”—the women in white coats who make designers’ visions come to life.
Today, the front row is just as likely to include a Chinese investor such as Wendy Yu, an Indian businesswoman like Natasha Poonawalla, or a philanthropist and street-style star such as Swede Fredrik Robertsson, who runs a charity supporting LGBTQ causes and the hair-care company Björn Axén. Celebrities, always sprinkled in, are now firm fixtures, in both the audience and on the runway. At this past week’s couture shows in Paris, guests included much of the Kardashian clan including Kim Kardashian’s oldest child North West, “Selling Sunset” reality-show star Christine Quinn, Sigourney Weaver, K-Pop artist CL and more.
Many of the collections this week bore concepts and clothing that will ricochet well beyond carpeted mansions in Dallas and Dubai. Most notably at Balenciaga, creative director Demna (who goes by a mononym) showed a tour de force of a collection that combined the signature streamlined shapes of the house’s founder Cristóbal Balenciaga with a true sense of un-gimmicky innovation: aerodynamic face shields engineered by Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science; satin-lined Japanese denim; lifelike faux fur designed using high-definition photo mapping; and speaker bags in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. Twenty of those bags, at €8,500 a pop, were immediately available to buy in the brand’s new open-to-the-public couture store on Avenue George V, a departure from the hushed private salons that typically define the couture experience.
Demna is invested in the new faces of couture, sending handwritten welcome notes to clients such as Mr. Robertsson. First attending couture shows nine years ago, he’s since become one of their most visible consumers, buying six to eight looks a year (never over €100,000, he said) and wearing them to events such as the Met Gala. To this season’s Jean Paul Gaultier show, designed by Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, he wore a red velvet gown with a train held aloft by two nearly naked tattooed men. (Friends, he clarified, from the porn industry). Mr. Robertsson’s own numerous tattoos include one of Xanax on his hand, to remind him to keep calm.
When Mr. Robertsson first started buying couture, he was rejected by some of the more established houses because he was a man. He heard similar stories of women being turned away if they didn’t fit the look—or the size—of a house. Today, he’s one of a small but growing group of men that buy and wear couture. He has close relationships with both the advisors who take care of top clients as well as progressive designers such as Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino (who staged his own couture show in Rome yesterday), Iris van Herpen and Demna.
Mr. Robertsson said he collaborates closely with designers on these looks, customizing both the fit and certain design elements. They typically involve three fittings, one in Paris on a toile (muslin), then one in Stockholm and a final one in Paris. Payment structure varies by customer, but Mr. Robertsson tends to put half down up front and half at the end.
When he spots something he wants on the runway, he immediately texts his client-relations contact to secure it. “You have to be fast,” he said, as typically either only one is made, or only sold to a single customer per continent. Oftentimes, because he favors out-there looks, he’s in competition with celebrities’ stylists, who will borrow the garment for a huge event, making it less unique for the client. He almost bought the voluminous black Balenciaga gown worn by Rihanna at the 2021 Met Gala. “If I would have bought that and press had sent it to Rihanna, I would have been so pissed,” he said.
After spending a week pestering everyone I met with the question, “Is couture keeping up with the times?” the theater producer and artist Jordan Roth threw it back at me: “Are the times keeping up with couture?” As someone who is steeped in the art and theater worlds, who has been collecting couture since Clare Waight Keller was the designer at Givenchy, he considers couture to be another art form. He explained, “They are pieces of work that you may want to collect or perform.”