{ "title": "On couture" , "date": 1663767038 , "content": [ "" , [ "p", "September marks the beginning of a new fashion season. Fashion weeks. Models walking on catwalks. Fancy parties with beautiful people. For us in the bespoke fashion and eveningwear industry, Autumn also marks the end of a very busy delivery season and the time to revert to our fabric rolls, mannequins and scissors." ] , [ "p", "Before we do that we just wanted to make a pause, take a breath and reflect on why we love our market segment so much." ] , [ "p", "The term couture is much more than a market segment, it is a state of mind. A culture that you have to practice, with flair and spontaneity. But couture is also heavily criticised these days. A lot of buzz is regularly made about catwalks organised in the middle of the Moroccan desert, a show apparently wasting water in Paris in the middle of a heatwave, and how unsustainable that can be. Calling this a wrongdoing is not only reductive of an industry, it marks a deep misunderstanding of it." ] , [ "p", "It is an apparent paradox that the couture industry was born and thrived in the ashes of royal privileges, a promise of equality, yet to be immediately used as a new means of social stratification. Are high-end goods only a reflection of demonstrative ambition, an instrument of rivalry, a badge of superiority? Or are they an instrument of expressive ambition, an aspirational symbol of art and humanism, the demonstration of what we can do when we have no creative limits and the liberty to be unresonable?" ] , [ "p", "There is nothing admirable in consumerist narcissism, in pretending that wearing ostensibly a piece of fashion or a certain leather bag makes you a better person. That is the behaviour of people who misplace the social value of the items they buy over their functional and personal value. According to market studies, nearly forty percent of people are in this category. Quite unsurprisingly, they are also those who buy the highest amount of fake products." ] , [ "p", "But then there are the others. Those for whom owning is above all a matter of originality, spirit and inspiration. A matter of love, emotion and beauty. Of art and craft. A spice. If there are two sides to our business, this is our side. The tasty one." ] ] , "author": "Alex VB" }