Ms Robyn Healy
International Fashion & Textiles
National Gallery of Victoria
robyn.healy@ngv.vic.gov.au
Robyn is the Senior Curator of Fashion and Textiles, a position she has held for the last twelve years. Previously working at the National Gallery of Australia, where she was the inaugural Curator of international Fashion 1982-89 and the Senior Curator of International Decorative Arts from 1990. Robyn has worked with costume and textile collections for over 18 years and her specialist area is 20th century fashion and design. She lectures extensively and has published various catalogues and articles. Robyn is a member of the Frances Burke Textile Resource committee, and the Melbourne Fashion Festival exhibitions advisory committee.
Haute Couture Rocks!
Images of celebrities and the obscenely rich sitting in the front row, 'beautiful' people who are over- coiffured, designer branded, mindlessly watching clothes paraded on a Parisian catwalk that appear quite ridiculous, is a common recollection of haute couture. Is this type of fashion too easily dismissed and misunderstood? This paper examines the relevancy of haute couture today, looking at its past and its evolutionary future. In a world dominated by clothing reproduction, branding, casual- sportswear malaise, sweatshop manufacture, and media hype, haute couture represents the craft of fashion design and making. Since the 1950s and the subsequent takeover by ready-to-wear, couture for many had become an elitist 19th century relic, a curiosity waiting for extinction. Saved and revitalised over the past decades by Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld and more recently John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier and Viktor & Rolf, couture is currently experiencing a renaissance and new relevance. Haute couture is not simply about very expensive clothes for very rich women. Now haute couture is one of the last bastions of original design, clothing ideas, and high quality technique, where the manipulation of cloth and thread, fused with fine making skills, creates garments of the most fantastical and brave kind. Worn by a select few models, transmitted via the internet and detailed in fashion magazines, provide a catalyst for many contemporary designers.
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