Haute Couture Sells Out, Up & Backwards

Walls of fashion crumble, but it still survives. How long can it still manage to be relevant?

The world of fashion seems to be the one place left where a designer can rake in the millions while still satisfying his starving artist sensibilities. But "starving artist" should not imply a lack of talent, but a vision so fantastical that it remains impractical (both aesthetically and financially) for the girl who just wants a nice black Calvin Klein dress for a dinner party. So how do fashion designers manage to survive? With perfume, cosmetics and second-rate lines.

Fashion is therefore safe. While many Y2Kers are running around prophesying the end of everything from power grids to rock & roll, the fashion industry has taken on the fin-de-sicle with fervor, dubbing orange the "millennial color" and making fashion picks for the next century. But as the high fashion avant-garde parades forward in full plumage--feather, sequins, fur and leather--many members of the old guard have run for cover. But some, like it-girl Miuccia Prada, were easy converts, spending years preparing for their 15 minutes in the millennial spotlight. Over the last few years, sterile, boxy minimalism has disappeared from the runways, overrun by Tom Ford and his new Gucci Empire. Others, however, like Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren have been left to feign acceptance, seeking solace in the profitably stream-lined second lines: DKNY, Emperio Armani/Armani Exchange (they're really the same), and Polo (on top of all those perfume sales).

But this upheaval was inevitable, ever since a thin red line was drawn, separating what was known as haute couture ("high sewing") and prt--porter ("ready-to-wear"). Yet the walls couldn't stand forever, and as more designers like Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren divert energy to lower-end lines, high fashion is in danger of becoming a sterile status symbol. On the other hand, many new designers working outside of the houses associated with haute couture are doing work that challenges the very term haute couture. This is the "apocalyptic" upheaval that causes many to predict the end of fashion. Yet, by all appearances, the shook-up world of current fashion will make the year 2000 a ripe crucible, separating the poseurs from the true artistes.

These changes have been complicated by a 20-year old trend to bring fashion to the masses. In addition to things like DKNY and A/X, two examples exist in our fair city: Gap Inc.'s high-end line, the Banana Republic (with four locations alone in the greater Boston area) and the conceptually resourceful Filene's Basement.

Across the street from the Ritz Carlton and nestled between the posh shoulders of the Armani boutique and Alan Bilizeran, the 25 Newbury Street Banana Republic seems to want to play in the big leagues. They use their location as much for brand name advertisement as for selling clothes. And it seems to be working; across Boston people are buying and vying to dress like a banana.

Yet many, blessed with the insight that "Banana" is not a designer, and damned with a masochistic willingness to bear the underworld, still head for the designer labels of Filene's Basement. Originally established as a wholesale repository for excess merchandise from the department store upstairs, the Basements "Vault" is a treasure trove of designer clothing. It's all here, gold and Gucci, if a few seasons unfashionable.

This puffing up of retail lines is in a sense also a dumbing down of legitimate designer fashion, just as the mass repoduction of a famous work of art would blur one's conception of the actual thing. One wonders if fashion would be safer in a museum. Fashion is art, after all. If painting the nude is considered the highest of artistic genres, then clothing the body is in the least soft sculpture. One look at the designs of haute couturiers such as John Galliano for the House of Dior can't help but draw comparisions to the surrealism of Magritte and Escher. Yet fashion is hardly a material imitation of the beaux-arts. Of the two forces blurring the distinction between haute couture and prt--porter, it is the upstarts who are keeping fashion alive. From the beautiful origami poetry of Yohji Yamamoto to the jaw-droppingly precise seduction of a Richard Tyler gown to the eclectic utilitarian sensibilities of Helmut Lang (three designers who have yet to fashion a perfume), these younger collections have proven to be high fashion without the pretentious haute couture label, living proof that fashion will live for another 1000 years.