From Runway – To Shop "Exodus"

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It’s a long way to the shop the highlights of the show passes. Sometimes they can be altered beyond recognition. What happens after the show finishes that helps haute couture masterpieces becoming wearable and marketable?

Let’s start with the showing. It’s the most important moment when the new collection is first presented for the judgment of mass media and fashion elite. Within 15 – 20 minutes a couturier shows the ideas of the season by means of clothes, accessories, hair, make-up, music and light but trying to keep a focus on fashion than the supplements.

Lately designers consult with styling specialists. The last usually work for fashion magazines and the most prominent of them are acknowledged as fashion icons. It’s them who determine the main features of a presentation. They could decide, for example, to make the runway showing just in one color or in a limited color-grade. They also compound clothes and accessories for the showing; recommend a manner make-up and hair should look.

Some garments need serious adaptation to real life. It’s hard to imagine what would happen if somebody appears anywhere except the runway wearing a peacock plumed totally transparent corset dress with netting. There’s another problem, too. After the showing some outfits that had been carefully blended by the master are hardly recognizable when divided and stored in boxes or other packing. And finally, if you are not a model height or shape, you couldn’t enjoy those tempting pieces.

The adaptation consists in making the entire look of the clothes more acceptable in the society, in making them comfortable enough to wear, in reduction of some fancy details (one flounce instead of for, a lining for a filmy silk dress, lower mini, shorter neckline etc.). The main rule here is not to overdo. Clients don’t pay outrageous money to become mediocre. They want something special. They adore painstaking details and lush colors. They like to stand out among the masses. But the way-out garments are reserved rarely and mostly for the private collections, for the museums of fashion or for the most progressive boutiques like Colette in Paris. Sometimes singular copies are also ordered.

Shops also receive the parts of the collection that were not presented on the runway for this or that reason: maybe they didn’t correspond to the showing concept or “color-line”, maybe they already were ready to wear and thus were not so catchy as some others, or maybe the clothes were not that expensive just because they belong to the secondary lines (such as jeans, sports and junior wear) which are usually not included into the presentations.

From time to time Fashion Houses try to refresh their image and attract the press by making a stir. But the most devoted clients of the staunchest Houses are advanced in years and the reputable designers respect their interests and their adherence to a specific style. Cacharel, for example, together with the hot outfits always set out more traditional ones for the substantial clients.

Key items of collections live their own lives. They could be seen on the covers of fashion magazines, in commercials, in boutique-windows – everywhere! Press officers of Fashion Houses in a soft voice but a tough manner insist on this or that item being presented on the pages of a fashion magazine by its editor. When the editor tries to object, the representatives answer that the editor's preference is not creative enough to be the highlight of the collection. This is the reason of why journalists and buyers see separated output – the garments are not at all the same. Gaultier devotees could remember how bitterly they were disappointed when in 1999 the rock'n'roll cowboy boots bedecked by Jean-Paul were not purchasable after they had been photographed and widely advertised.

Boutiques, fine dress shops, concept stores have in some measure their specific politics. A boutique chain has unific style and its outlets differ in nuances depending on the position and caliber, whereas the windows are changed "in chorus" every season and the collections are quite the same. All of them act on the commercial consideration. They "edit" a new collection appreciating the likes and dislikes of their patrons and counting the risks at the same time.

Rybachenko Svetlana
Fashion Editor