Revel in “The Glorious Tradition,” a 1995 Couture Feature With a Special Portfolio by Irving Penn

“The Glorious Tradition,” by Katherine Betts, was originally published in the December 1995 issue of Vogue.

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The photographs are famous: Lisa Fonssagrives posing for Irving Penn in Balenciaga’s petal dress. The couturiers are stars: Karl Lagerfeld striding triumphantly down the runway amid a flood of flashbulbs; the flurry of media attention when John Galliano inherited the venerable House of Givenchy. And the controversy is both inevitable and unending: a steady stream of stories questioning the future of haute couture, a litany of complaints about its frivolity, exclusivity, and expense. Ever since World War II, when Christian Dior jolted Paris fashion out of its wartime slump with his New Look, couture repeatedly has had to save itself from extinction. Its demise was first proclaimed when French ready-to-wear hit the market in the sixties. Later, during the oil crises of the seventies, Time magazine announced that couture was not dead but “breathing very hard.” Most recently, The Wall Street Journal warned that many of France’s remaining eighteen couture houses probably “won’t survive in the face of growing international competition.”

If there were ten commandments for couture, this would be number one: Fabric shall dictate form. Here, in a departure from his signature rococo splendor of heavy embroidery or ruffles, Christian Lacroix creates a duchesse satin dress for a new age of couture.

So what keeps this craft alive? Who provides the emergency resuscitation at each economic downturn? Aside from exceptional moments such as the birth of a new house (think of Christian Lacroix in 1987), couture survives on its own mystique, a visual, oral, and tactile history that has been passed down from generations of artisans since Frederick Worth first set up shop in 1858. It’s a history half-cloaked in secrecy, since each couture house, like a tribe, maintains a code of silence. Couturiers protect their clients, who, in turn, are loath to reveal the price they pay for a dress. And even the seamstresses and the craftsmen, the real muscle behind the business, are reluctant to disclose the minutiae of a meticulous tradition: one year to create the fabric, 160 hours to turn a jacket, 55 hours to sew a skirt, 30 hours to craft a silk corsage, 150 hours for a dress, 45 hours for a pair of shoes, 100 hours for a hat.

At a moment when couture is under attack yet again, the voices that resonate in the workrooms, the studios, the back rooms, and the fitting rooms—the sewers, the craftsmen, the couturiers, and the clients—speak in defense of their craft.