III.

HAUTE COUTURE
III.1.BOURGEOISIE FASHION Bourgeoisie fully established itself in the society during the XIX century, and immediately felt the need to find a specific social identity based on appearance: clothes. So we notice different styles compared to farmers and workers, or aristocracy and other kinds of bourgeoisie as well. That is why the XIX century has been a crucial period for fashion, also known as the modern phase of fashion. A century that fostered changes and saw the outset of organized systems of clothing production meant only for an elite of buyers who, however, were able to influence the entire population.

Picture 5 Haute couture was born in autumn 1857 in Paris, with the opening of the English atelier of Charles Worth: he was the very first imposing his own style by proposing every year a new collection of exposure dresses that buyers could see and choose and would have been tailored and customized later on. It was thus created a system of production based on two different levels: on

one hand, the haute couture created its dress models for the high bourgeoisie; on the other, the industrial tailoring imitated the same models for lower social classes. III.2. THE DAWNING/OUTSET OF HAUTE COUTURE At the beginning of the XX century, through the crucial role played by fashion magazines, we witnessed a further change in the clothing system, that is forced to reorganize itself and present new collection every 6 months. Vogue magazine, founded at the end of 1800, has progressively become the main reference point, a sort of pillar in the sector, as for presenting new dresses and collections introducing photography. The main stylist of the beginning of 1900 is Paul Poiret, imposing himself thanks to the creation of easy-making and comfortable dresses, of clear oriental inspiration: he imposed trousers for women, shortened skirts, but above all reduced the use of the bustire, symbol of submissions that repressed the body. He did so to interpret the social emancipation desire of his clients, thus changing the female silhouette, although being still too attached to a kind of aesthetic that is too close to the Liberty movement.

Picture 6 At a certain point people felt the need to give a more effective interpretation to the revolutionary phase that was affecting fashion in the early 1900s: during the 1920s, for instance, every single woman so not only aristocracy or bourgeoisie started having a social life and wanted to be free to express her own style according to the emancipation movements that were rising in that specific period, and all this gave birth to a very important liberalization process of womens personality and body. The First World War was fundamental in this direction as often women found themselves carrying out activities that were usually carried out by men that had left to join the army. So

women, replacing men in factories and farming activities had to wear more comfortable and functional dresses, closer to men clothing. So women could be no longer considered weak and vulnerable as during the 1800, but they had to give a strong and dynamic image: so the strong connection existing between the body and clothing has been a decisive impulse towards the liberalization of fashion, uncovering more and more the body and adopting a manly hair cut also known as la garonne, presented in Paris in 1924, that made them look like unshaped teenagers. Jean Patou and, even more, Gabrielle Chanel also known as Coco played a fundamental role for the modernization of women clothing. Patou was the first stylist ever putting his name on his creations and in 1930 he presents the cologne Joy, still considered one of the best classic fragrances.

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III.3. COCO CHANEL: THE BIRTH OF CHIC Coco Chanel was able to interpret womens emancipation process in the world of fashion born in the first decades of the 1900 by making dresses more masculine, stricter and practical. She decides to completely abandon the bustier and replace it with minimal tailleurs, shirts, pull overs, ties, trousers, the so-called cloche hats, short and tailored fit dresses made with practical and comfortable fabrics, but also poor ones such as jersey, using neutral colors as black, blue, white and

replacing jewels with flashy trinkets. Coco Chanels style was probably influenced by her own biography: first of all, her humble origins of a child who had lost her mother and was abandoned in a convent by her father; she was raised by nuns who taught her that a young lady had to behave in a sober and austere way.

Picture 8 Her experience as a young singer in concert cafs helped her get to know several important people in the art field, such as Max Jacov, Pierre Reverdy, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinskij, and they were all so poor that Coco herself used to keep them. So on one hand Coco was influenced by the cubist aesthetic, characterized by vertical and horizontal lines, angular plans and bidimentional geometries; and on the other hand by the modern movement, characterized by a rejection of decorations but rather a promotion of objects linearity and functionality. We have to bear in mind also the influences that Coco received by her lovers as Arthur Boy Capel that had adopted a style appearantly poor and neglected but in reality rich in details according to the tastes of the English dandies who preferred vintage clothes to new clothes and who said that the real elegance was to be unnoticed to flaunt ones intelligence. The birth of a new social context is fundamental for the development of Chanel; in fact, the expansion of workers gives

visibility to work uniforms. In addition, the spread of new sports such as tennis, swimming, cycling, skying and horse-back riding made it possible to create some pieces of clothing proper to these purposes. Coco Chanel knew how to present helself as the best interpreter of modern womens elegance, often wearing her own creations, following for her haute couture dresses the guidelines of luxury, always detaching from the aristocratic emphasis thanks to her discreet and not flaunting style that was still able to communicate social prestige through the attention given to details. During her career, Chanel has made of modernity her core point, accepting, for example, to dress up Hollywood stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson during the 30s, being the forerunner of all those stylists who decided to cooperate with the Cinema and promote modernity through it.

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Chanel also understood the importance of the make-up industry and colognes to firm up the image of the brand and increase incomes. In fact, today, the cologne Chanel N5 launched by Coco in 1921 and based on a previous project of the perfumer Grasse Ernest Beaux that mixes flower scents with new sintetic substances for the first time - is still one of the most sold and evergreen colognes on a worldwide level, while the income of Chanel make up products makes up for more than 90% of the maisons total income. Witnessing the rapid changings in fashion after the Second World War, Chanel was able to reinvent her style offering reassuring dresses to women suffering from the aftermath of WWII, as the famous tailleurs worn by many women publically exposed at that time, such as Jacqueline Kennedy or Grace of Monaco. In fact, if during the first decades of the 1900 Cocos creations were considered revolutionary, as the time went by her proposals were more and more based on baroc and classic styles, with a simple silhouette enriched by flashy details, such as buttons, chain and jewels, and its right for this reason that Roland Barthes uses the word chic to define the style just inaugurated by Chanel. Chanel had to update her reference values, she had to stop supporting womens emancipation and start idealizing womans figure through an abstract, ethereal and inmaterial vision. This means that the classic influence affected Chanels aesthetics more and more, heavily contributing to the connotation of an evergreen brand all over the world. III.4. FASHION DURING THE 1930S The original and transgressive style of Elsa Schiaparelli was counterposed to Chanels linearity. With the opening in Paris of the Atelier Pour le Sport in 1924 by Elsa, new pullovers with very big trompe-loeil bows were launched, as well as t-shirts decorated with fishes, US marine corp-style tattoos, zodiac signs and human skeletons bones. But Elsa was particularly attracted by visual and figurative arts, especially by the surrealistic movement, and thus promotes cooperations with important artists such as Salvador Dal, with whom she tailores a tailleur with drawers instead of pockets, just like Dali did in his Venus de Milo with drawers in 1936.

Picture 10 In 1938 she also launches Shocking, a parfume with the bottle shaped as the silhouette of a woman, which name recalled her invention of the Shocking Pink, a color she invented, inspired to the shades of pink used in the pictures of Bb Brard, a famous painter. A very important phenomenon for the development of fashion in those years was the opening of cinemas in big American malls, where you could find models of dresses worne by Hollywood cinema stars. The cinema thus becomes a fundamental tool in the creation and setting up of new clothing trends, such as the imposition of the brand new, middle length haircut la page, which definitely replaces the old school haircut la garonne. Salvatore Ferragamo was working in Hollywood and showed himself gifted when it came to fashion: he knew how to use Italys symbols, synonym of quality and art, to make his products more desirable to American clients. That is why he decided to go back to Italy, take advantage of the world famous handcrafts and write Florence on the label, aware of Americans passion for this city. Ferragamos boom occurred in 1937 with the launch of the so-called wedge heel and, ten years later, of the invisible sandal characterized by weaved nylon strings. III.5. DIOR AND THE FRENCH HAUTE COUTURE IN THE AFTERMATH OF WWII When Paris was invaded by German troops, the activity of the haute couture boosting center was blocked for four years but, from August 1944, the city started to recover. The launch of the first collection of Christian Dior was characterized by the opulency and the somptuosity of the so-called new look, able to answer to the luxury and elegance needs emerged after the repression of WWII. Dior, as well as Chanel, owns part of his fame to the cinema and to his role as costume designer during the climax of the cinema noir that not only saw Hollywood adopting a more realistic

language, but also introducing the dark ladies or femmes fatales, beautiful and seductive but also cruel and ruthless women. Thanks to the great fame of Dior, after WWII French Haute Couture received the right boost that allowed it to the be the forerunner of fashion trends and be among the top 5 world brands during the 1950s with couturiers such as Balenciaga, Givenchy and Balmain.

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