Prepare for `Lady Lavery goes to Osaka'

Twice a year, without fail, the more turgid sections of daily newspapers fill with photographs of angular girls in singular dresses. Ruched, slashed, layered with embroidery or draped with old bottles, these are photos of fashion in extremis. There's little here that will crop up in replica on the high street, and there's very little chance that any of us will ever wear, or even see, these dresses. This is haute couture, the most elite studio in the house of fashion, where everything is made to measure, where technique and detail are more important than commercialism, and where asking the price means you probably can't afford it.

As soon as the photos of the haute couture collections start appearing, you may be quite sure that articles heralding its demise will follow shortly after. With the high street snapping at the heels of ready-to-wear collections, and with commercialism coming increasingly to the fore in fashion, it seems inevitable that handmade, labour-intensive, prohibitively priced haute couture will die out. Yet this year, there's a new face showing at Paris's haute couture collections for the first time and, what's more, he's Irish.

Peter O'Brien has been chief designer at Rochas since 1990, when he was brought in to create a collection for the French house best known for perfume and cosmetics after it ceased producing fashion collections in the 1950s. This season, he has been invited by the notoriously picky Chambre Syndicale to create a haute couture collection under his own name which will be unveiled at a show in the Irish embassy in Paris this Wednesday. This will make O'Brien the first Irish womenswear designer to show haute couture since Captain Edward Molyneaux in the 1950s, although milliner Philip Treacy showed there last season.

So having worked in Paris since 1981 with Dior, Givenchy, Chloe (as head designer) and Rochas, why has O'Brien finally decided to produce his own couture collection? "I'm perhaps the singularly most unambitious designer in the world and my clothes were never a means to an end for me. I would have to say that part of the reason is just for the pleasure of making clothes like this and part of it is also a serious business venture." A business venture? While haute couture has its champions, their belief in its survival is rarely because of its own economic potential. Instead it is viewed as a glorified advertising campaign, buying column inches and free publicity for fashion houses such as Chanel and Dior, who will sell millions of pounds worth of handbags, perfumes and cosmetics on the back of it. Yet O'Brien, who has no diffusion line or accessories to flog, firmly believes that there is a need and a niche for haute couture. "There's this huge belief in the holy trinity of Prada, Vuitton and Gucci, and sure, there's a lot of people who have the income to buy those clothes, and who don't mind looking like Puff Daddy's girlfriend. But I'm always hearing women saying that there's nothing in the shops or in magazines to reflect what women really want to wear. I want to make really nice, quiet, beautiful clothes that are totally contemporary, not mumsy in any way, but luxurious. Yes, there's definitely a market for that," says O'Brien, who will not be giving up his "day job" with Rochas.

"Of course haute couture can also serve as the most expensive ad campaign in the world because you can't buy publicity like that. But for me, it's about getting back to that 1950s and 1960s idea of the couturier. There's a feeling in the air that people are getting tired of huge corporations where the clothes are hyped out of all proportion."

O'Brien so firmly believed in the potential of haute couture that he approached the Chambre Syndicale, on the advice of Dutch designer Josephus Thimister, another relative newcomer to the haute couture scene, who pointed out that while there are over 240 pret a porter shows, there are just over 20 haute couture. The Chambre Syndicale were delighted to issue an invitation to O'Brien to join as an official off-calendar participant (he can become an invited member next year) as they were anxious to keep the number of shows high to attract the all-important American buyers. They were also more than familiar with O'Brien's work with Rochas, which, with its extensive use of hand work and detail, already occupies a middle ground between haute couture and ready to wear.

O'Brien is well aware of haute couture's reputation as the "dusty old lady of Paris" but doesn't see its non-directional nature - we are unlikely to see many of the trends of this week's catwalk shows cropping up in our local boutiques - as a drawback. "Whether clothes are directional or not is very difficult to assess any more. Really, the influence is coming from the street rather than down the catwalk." For O'Brien, the strengths and importance of haute couture lie in its artisanship; "We live in such a technocracy that skilled work done by hand is in danger of being seriously downgraded. For me the joy of haute couture is working with the atelier ladies - I just do a sketch and hand it over to them. It's a pleasure to see the incredible work they produce. You can spend so much more time on the clothes than you can in a commercial collection. Then there's the wonderful fabrics, being able to line with silk; these details."

Such work costs money; O'Brien estimates that most of the pieces from Wednesday's show will cost between £2,000 and £4,000, with the heavily embroidered pieces costing more again - but O'Brien has access to a world of women who could pay twice that. He says he constantly finds himself in the position of defending sartorial extravagance; "People are stangely prudish about fashion. There's never the same reaction to people spending their wealth on houses or cars or lifestyles, but when it comes to clothes, people seem to find clothes that do more than cover your rude bits, somehow morally dubious."

For his first collection O'Brien has unashamedly returned to his Irish roots. Using Magee tweeds alongside Japanese kimonos, he jokingly refers to the collection as "Lady Lavery goes to Osaka", and boasts of the large numbers of different shades of green "from snotty green to bright grass green". There are panels inset with multiple layers of chiffon, Celtic embroidery by the renowned Monsieur Lesage, lots of tulle and wool crepe, and lots of "details which you might not even see". One outfit teams a black wool crepe evening dress with a tulle embroidered apron showing just a peek of scarlet petticoat at the toe. Then there's the Munster cloak which O'Brien throws over a very funky black jumpsuit.

"When I was younger I rejected anything traditionally Irish - I think that was the Christian Brothers stuffing it down my neck . . . But this collection is using a lot of Irish influences; I want it to be very poetic and pretty." The show will use 20 models sashaying down the impromptu catwalk at the embassy to traditional Irish music played by everyone from Sean O Riada to the Rolling Stones.

Still, in the fickle world of fashion - where the contemporary is king - will tweed, tulle and tenors be quite, well, trendy enough? "Everyone is always telling me I have to be trendy but I refuse to drag my clothes into some virtual trendy world inhabited by fashion stylists and bored fashion editors looking for a good picture. Really I don't feel that what I do is fashion. I think I make beautiful clothes."

Peter O'Brien's haute couture collection will be covered in Thursday's news pages.