FUNKE ADETUTU writes from Paris that there is a growing competition between new and old style labels creating a viable market in French fashion tradition

It’s few minutes past four this Saturday evening and the long stretch of Avenue des Champs-Elysees is full of tourists streaming along the sidewalks. The sun casts long shadows of skyscrapers on the road, forming a crisscross of beautiful images for a warm evening. On the floors of some of these skyscrapers are located shops of well known fashion designers around the world.

Little wonder, Paris is known for its monuments and its artistic and cultural life. It is considered one of the world capitals of fashion and luxury, a city dedicated to lovers , romance, art, fashion. Symbol of French culture, entertainment and major museums are an attraction for almost thirty million visitors who visit the city per year. On this avenue, the stores of Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss stand tall as if they are in some kind of competition. The two labels, some French citizens agree, are symbols of the Paris Haute Couture.

In Paris, Haute Couture is not an industry, it is a savoir faire, a craft, which complements ready-to-wear clothes. History has it that when haute couture was organised and structured the way it is currently in 1944, there was no ready-to-wear clothes as it is known today. Everything was made for the client and there was nothing like creative ready-to-wear. Today Chanel and Dior, the most legendary couture houses, are also at the same time among the biggest exporters of ready-to-wear, and without their ready-to-wear lines, their couture lines could not exist.

Didier Grumbach, president Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt à Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode says in a local magazine that haute couture plays an important role in the fashion business today in Paris as it encourages young designers to manufacture in China, and welcomes luxury conglomerates as a necessary part of the fashion eco-system.

According to him, without the creativity and craft of haute couture, the ready-to-wear lines would be like a human body without a soul.  “The brands that we all know were founded by artists who expressed themselves on the body rather than on a canvas. Fashion is an industry and the designer has to compromise, but during a certain period of the designer’s life, it is art, it must be art, if not, there is nothing and a brand cannot last,” he says

Realistically, Grumbach observes that fashion is a rapidly-evolving business, one that will require a change in an established industry in Europe.  “We encourage designers, and especially the new generation of designers, to manufacture in China, and most of them do in the same way that their predecessors gave assignments to Italian factories,” he adds.

Grumbach does not rule out the fact that as the world is opening up today with the internet,  designers can sketch a design in Paris and produce it any part of the world.

Jean Marie, a student of fashion in Paris observes that luxury stores are assisting to nurture young brands and foster healthy industry competition and creativity.

When Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain opened their couture houses in the 1940s, the House of Worth and the House of Paquin were still operating nearby,” explains Grumbach. “There is always competition between new brands with new blood and brands which are already in their third or fourth generation, it’s part of French fashion tradition.”