DO you have even a passing interest in fashion? Are you passing through New York in the next couple of months? If so then there is one destination which deserves to be on your must see list: the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. Right now, this is playing host to a truly remarkable exhibition with the self explanatory title Haute Couture. As the Parisian fashion houses prepare to unveil their latest couture collections over the next fortnight, now is an opportune moment to review this art form and ponder its future.
For much of the past 30 years, the imminent demise of couture has been regularly predicted as the number of clients has declined. Whereas earlier this century there was an immeasurable supply of couturiers in France, now there are only 18. Similarly, the number of seamstresses employed by these ateliers had gone into steep decline with few young workers entering the profession. As the Irish born milliner Philip Treacy has commented recently, "there used to be 7,000 hatmakers in London; now there are only seven.
One obvious reason for couture's retreat is cost - few women today are either willing or indeed able to pay in the region of £15,000 for a dress. As expenses have risen, the market accordingly has shrunk. But there are still clients for this kind of clothing, women who appreciate fabric manufactured over the course of a year, skirts requiring more than 50 hours work to finish, silk corsages crafted over the space of a week. They are happy to attend a minimum of three fittings before the garment is considered ready because they know that what they pay for will have been made to their own specifications. As such, each piece should emphasise the wearer's better features and play down any flaws. An entirely personalised item, it will fit only the woman for whom it has been made.
Couture's origins can be traced back to the house founded in Paris by Englishman Charles Frederick Worth during the Second Empire - one of Worth's most loyal clients was the Empress Eugenie. From the beginning, couture had certain distinguishing features, not least a named figurehead such as Chanel, Poiret or, in our own age, Christian Lacroix. Additionally, there is the quality of the work itself, given that every garment is made - most often by hand - for a specific client. And, as the early part of the Metropolitan Museum's show underlines, often the decorative finish is far more lavish than would be possible on any ready to wear dress.
So the dresses of both Worth pere and his son Jean Philippe who succeeded as head of the house tend to come encrusted with lace and beading, giving elaborate surface detail to already heavily ornamented fabric. Because undergarments particularly corsets - determined shape, the couturier was able to concentrate attention on this ornamentation. And although the underlying shapes began to be simplified at the start of this century through the efforts of designers such as Paul Poiret and the Callot Soeurs, detailed decoration remained important. One example of Callot work in the show, dating from circa 1910, is an empire line gown of beige cotton net onto which a pattern of Byzantine intricacy has been applied in gold, silver pink and copper heads and sequins.
The most important change came after the first World War when the increased emancipation of women led to a radical alteration in their dress: suddenly the extravagant use of luxurious materials for its own sake became redundant. The inter war years were probably the most glorious for haute couture as designers rose to fresh challenges and learnt to treat their art as a science through an understanding of how fabric could be employed. Soft and flattering forms had to be created for clients without dependency on any underlying structures to sculpt the figure beneath. In the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition, it becomes clear that one of the most remarkable couturiers from this period was Madeleine Vionnet whose deceptively simple ensembles were actually the result of painstaking work. There is, for example, a maroon silk crepe day dress from 1926/27 where the central lattice panel of tiny pin tucks anchors at waist seam, beneath which falls the fine box pleated skirt. Equally impressive are Vionnet's bias cut, ecru silk, day dresses from 1920 or her cocktail dress of 1926, a breathtaking construction of black silk organza sewn into a honeycomb pattern.
Again, in the aftermath of the second World War, there was another flowering of couture, illustrated by the (possibly apocryphal) story of New York's Diana Vreeland sending her assistant to Paris for an artificial rose made to embellish a dress: by the quality of this tiny decorative item, Vreeland knew that no skills had been lost during the French occupation. There are, of course, wonderful examples of Dior's work at the Metropolitan Museum, as well as pieces by that other post war master Cristobal Balenciaga. Speaking of the latter, Gianni Versace (who is also represented in the exhibition) has justifiably said, "it can be minimal and be couture of course, Remember, Balenciaga was the greatest couturier of this century, and he was so pure. Fashion follows life. We simplify our lives now, so we simplify couture too.
THAT simplification began with likes of Chanel's 1926 day ensemble in black wool jersey (a fabric until then only employed for men's underwear) and continues with Versace's transparent industrial weight vinyl evening dress from last season. But couture simplicity doesn't mean want of attention to perfect finish; what marks every ensemble apart in this exhibition is consistent high quality revealed through the inclusion of original toiles alongside finished pieces and even some pieces of clothing turned inside out so that usually invisible work can be inspected. There is a ruthlessness about couture recalled by one seamstress formerly employed by Chanel who remembers designer's insistence on the very highest standards - "the night before a collection she would make us cry; she would make us change everything on a finished suit. It would be perfect, but not for her." As if to justify such behaviour, the exhibition includes a ravishingly beautiful day ensemble by Chanel from 1927 in beige wool tweed with pink and black floral silk chiffon, tiny pieces of which have been stitched onto the outfit's softly tailored coat.
So does couture still have a future? "As long as people want quality and refinement, couture will last," Gianni Versace has insisted. The emergence of Christian Lacroix in 1987 suggests that there remains a market for clothes of this quality even though taste - and the way in which women now live - has altered enormously during the course, of the century. "Couture is not about, constipated beading," according to John Galliano who has just taken over as head of the house of Givenchy. Over the past few seasons under his own ready to wear label, Galliano has exercised enormous influence and the hope in fashion circles is that he will now do the same in his new position. "Haute couture has never become entrenched, haughty or superannuated," argues the introduction to the Metropolitan Museum's show which instead proposes that this form "is a striving frequently avant garde, aesthetic catalyst." But the most persuasive arguments in favour of couture are the clothes themselves. They demonstrate that in the fashion hierarchy ready to wear, no matter how well designed, will always occupy second place.
HAPPY accident or deliberate planning? Rather like a series of fashion shows organised to coincide with one another, the Metropolitan Museum's current clothes exhibition is just one of a number with the same theme being staged in New York at the moment. Although an exhibition of fashion photography has already ended, others are set to run for some time to come make a dash for the Equitable Gallery on Seventh Avenue at 51st Street, however, as the show there closes next Saturday.
Called Serenissima: The Arts of Fashion in Venice, it examines the history of fashion in the Italian city from the 13th to the 18th century. There are wonderful complete ensembles included such as the brocaded taffeta gown from circa 1760 and a complete man's suit in dark red cut velvet from a decade later. But the show is more than just a collection of beautiful clothes, since it examines the arts of dying, weaving and tailoring in considerable detail, with examples of workpieces and unfinished cloth also included. And then there are the quirky and memorable exhibits such as the pair of courtesans' platform shoes in cut white leather and wood from the late 15th century; measuring 20 inches in height, these put to shame any remaining examples from the 1970s.
Uptown on 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue, the Museum of the City of New York is celebrating Manhattan's own unique sense of dress with an exhibition called Uncommon Threads: 300 Years of New York Style. It's a jumble sale of a show with items from different eras jostling for position; a woman's midnight blue riding outfit from the 1830s, for example, is presented alongside what's described as "Man's Day Ensemble 1977" - this turns out to be a pair of purple brush denim flares and a body tattoo T shirt.
With the current Jane Austen craze in the United States (Emma Thompson's version of Sense and Sensibility is playing to packed cinemas at the moment), one of the costumes attracting most attention in the show is a perfectly preserved white muslin day gown from the closing years of the 18th century. Also worth study is a velvet suit worn by New Yorker John Gerard Coster to George Washington's inauguration ball in 1789; compare this to the pastiche 18th century French court costumes created for Mr and Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt when they welcomed guests to the party inaugurating their newly completed Fifth Avenue mansion at the end of the last century.
Mixed in with the original gowns by the likes of Worth and Poiret (Isadora Duncan's 1912 evening dress) both of whom had loyal clientele in New York are the now threadbare white gabardine evening suit worn by Ezio Pinza in the original Broadway production of South Pacific, one of Cecil Beaton's 1966 costumes for the Metropolitan Opera's To Trovicita and the dull olive wool uniform belonging to "Buster" James Jarrett Jr, longtime doorman of department store Henri Bendel. Look out took for the portraits of deceased New York beauties such as Mona Williams; close to this picture is a glass case of invoices she received from the likes of Balenciaga as well as her 1927 Cartier bracelet of platinum set with sapphires and diamonds.
Uncommon Threads includes a number of examples of Schiaparelli's work but for a more detailed examination of this designer, it's well worth travelling out of Manhattan to the Brooklyn Museum which is currently offering A Slice of Schiaparelli. Amazingly this is the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to the Italian born couturier; it includes more than 50 garments and accessories most of which were donated to the museum by the late Millicent Rogers, heiress to the Standard Oil fortune and one of this century's most imaginative and best dressed women.
Schiaparelli said of Rogers: "If she had not been so terribly rich, she might, with her vast talent and unlimited generosity, have become a great artist . . . I loved and admired her immensely."
The feeling was reciprocal: Rogers was one of the designer's most ardent supporters, particularly during the war years when Schiaparelli was a refugee in the United States. The Brooklyn Museum's show, however, concentrates on the 1930s when Schiaparelli worked closely with many Surrealist artists particularly Salvador Dali, who suited her own methods of design. Never an innovator in terms of cutting or tailoring - Chanel always sneered at her rival's lack of even the most basic dressmaking ability - Schiaparelli preferred to see fashion as a decorative skill. In her 1954 autobiography Shocking Life, she commented dress designing . . . is to me not a profession but an art.
This explains why she was able to establish such a rapport with other artists including Christian Berard and Marcel Duchamp on whom she often drew for inspiration. At the Brooklyn Museum, for example, there is a full length red wool twill evening coat from her winter 1935/36 collection with large gold buttons designed by Jean Coeteau. But Schiaparelli also brought her own interpretation to surrealism to clothes such as a white silk organza evening gown from autumn 1939; called Musical Note, this is sewn over with musical notes in coloured metallic thread so that the entire dress looks like a piece of sheet music. To underscore the point, the matching suede belt has a working musical box inserted into its buckle.
Like many Surrealists, Schiaparelli was fascinated by insects and many of the accessories included in the show explore this interest; a necklace of clear plastic, for example, on which rest coloured metal flies (Schiaparelli was never afraid to mix man made materials with the most expensive of natural fabrics). The same flies turn up again on the collar of a pink silk moire blouse which is teamed here with a black wool and rayon crepe day suit from the late 1930s. And there is an extravagant butterfly printed silk/satin evening dress from, Schiaparelli's summer 1937 collection which comes with a matching parasol carrying the same motif. While this is obviously very much Millicent Rogers's interpretation of the designer, the exhibition still manages to be a superb introduction to the unique vision of Schiaparelli.