As the spectacle of couture continues to boost brands’ cultural cachet, Karina explores a dying industry’s perhaps more significant mission to usher in a new wave of prospective clientele: the salvation army of millennial shoppers…

While social media and the influencers running it have made fashion infinitely more accessible over the past decade and a half, the same cannot be said of the mysterious workings of couture. We’ve wept with Melissa Holdbrook-Akposoe (Melissa's Wardrobe to the girls in the know) over Hermès rejecting her Birkin advances on Instagram Stories; marvelled as luxury personal shopper Michelle Lovelace secured in turn, not one but five of these leather gold bricks in a matter of days for Kanye West to gift Julia Fox and company for her birthday; and ultimately empathised as said Ms “Uncahjams” Fox lamented over the agony of owning one outside the 1%. But little progress has been made in unveiling the shadowy gilded halls of couture in comparison — until now.

Designed and manufactured with meticulous precision exclusively for the über rich, couture is at once the discerning shopper’s personal playground touting rarity and intimacy with some of the world’s foremost design tastemakers; the devout collector’s marketplace for contemporary artefacts of design history; and an otherworldly spectacle for those happily ignoring the elusive price tags for practical reasons — rumoured to start at $30,000 for separates, with some dresses sitting comfortably in the ballpark of six figures — to marvel at and, with increasing commonality, critique.

Despite the global consumer base reportedly coming in at 4000, the #couture hashtag had garnered over a billion views on TikTok by close of the final AW22 couture show by Adeline André in Paris this July. Think runway reviews from media pundits, aspiring designers and fashion enthusiasts alike; think-pieces explaining the significance and allure of couture to an increasingly engaged young audience; and the occasional bitesized sizzle reels of the collections themselves set to the app’s more contemporary pop music sound bites, contrary to the typical classical soundscapes accompanying the live shows.

The world of couture, as policed by Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, is equally limited in membership to 16 houses today: Adeline André, Alexandre Vauthier, Alexis Mabille, Bouchra Jarrar, Chanel, Christian Dior, Franck Sorbier, Giambattista Valli, Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, Julien Fournié, Maison Margiela, Maison Rabih Kayrouz, Maurizio Galante, Schiaparelli, and Stéphane Rolland. Once 106 in 1946 turned 19 by 1970, even with the small playing field, many of these brands fly under the radar of social media’s fashion bubble; beholden to a laundry list of rules and regulations thus defining the craft of couture, from the number of fittings required per garment (no less than two) to the minimum technical workforce under employ in the atelier (a minimum of 20).

Beyond these houses, corresponding members such as Fendi and Iris van Herpen help populate the calendar of the four to five-day bi-annual affair, alongside guest houses like headline-grabbing Balenciaga and Cameroonian designer, Imane Ayissi: the rare but consistent representation of Black, African and female sartorial craftsmanship (notably, Pyer Moss has remained absent from 2022 catwalks following last year’s viral debut).

With appetite clearly on the rise in spite of the many financial obstacles on either side of the checkout, some brands are leading the charge in opening the door for the next generation of consumer, both physical and digital. For Pyer Moss Couture 1 last year, Kerby Jean-Raymond prefaced his sartorial history lesson in Black camp with a speech by Elaine Brown of the Black Panthers, highlighting not only the erasure of Black contributions to society from public consciousness but also the potential for couture’s expanding inclusion efforts, especially among young Black Americans. Pierpaolo Picciolo scored his Valentino AW22 couture collection this year with a live performance by Labrinth, the musical mastermind behind the defining sound of generation Euphoria.

Balenciaga’s star-studded collection this summer also saw creative director Demna meet his social media doppelgänger Saba Bakhia — the brains behind @demnagram — for the second time. Feeding the media frenzy surrounding the collection’s celebrity casting, Bakhia’s front-row coverage of the show provided a close look at Balenciaga’s second take on elevated streetwear couture, as well as intimate video portraits of some of the house’s most influential guests.

But as consumer attention shifts to this epitome of luxury, the same pitfalls that befell ready-to-wear under the influence of fast fashion, viral moments and next-day delivery seem inevitable. One of this season’s most highly anticipated shows was of course Jean Paul Gaultier’s latest in a series of guest designer takeovers following the 70-year-old fashion icon’s retirement in 2020. Yet another valiant effort in making couture accessible to the next generation of talent, Chitose Abe and Glenn Martens have since torn the house down, so to speak, with their homage to the iconic French designer, and this season saw Olivier Rousteing of Balmain fame next in line.

Rousteing and Gaultier’s relationship dates back several years as the former has often cited Gaultier as an inspiration for his own career, and the latter has become a staple in Balmain’s front row. So it came as no surprise that Rousteing’s collection was rife with scholarly celebrations of some of Gaultier’s most iconic silhouettes, prints and symbols of queer resistance. What did come as a surprise, however, were the scene-stealing safety pins holding many of the garments together, much to the dismay of critics and fans alike.

Piloted by Calum Knight — son of fashion photographer and SHOWStudio founder Nick Knight — in a TikTok on the company’s account, notes of blasphemy rung through the fashion world about the apparent attack on the sanctity of couture. The alleged root cause: poor relationship management between a designer and his petite mains, a most crucial factor in any couture undertaking. While it remains to be seen if, as Rousteing supporters suggest, the safety pins were decorative not functional, Knight raises a good point about the need to protect couture dressmaking from the commercial pressures of today’s light-speed fashion industry, most especially the unique craftspeople who uphold it in the ateliers.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the crème de la crème of fashion. By 2020, historic couture houses like Christian Lacroix had long since shut down operations and declared bankruptcy. But Paris Couture Fashion Week was finally waking up, expanding its oeuvre to include jewellery by inviting seven luxury accessory designers to showcase alongside the thinning catwalk schedule. An obvious attempt to attract wider media attention and purchase orders, this hyper-commercial gear change is largely credited to LVMH’s Bernard Arnault and just as heavily criticized by celebrated fashion journalist and author Dana Thomas in her book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre, warning of the impact of a media frenzy on the traditional luxury consumer averse to mass marketing and public access. But perhaps that was the idea?

Cementing the permeation of this strategy just days before their show, Balenciaga put their backs into their mission to disrupt the industry by announcing their new couture storefront just below the atelier of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s original Paris salon at 10 Avenue George V. Speaking to WWD’s Miles Socha, CEO Cédric Charbit cited the move as a bid to encourage public engagement with the art form and innovate the couture retail experience. But just as community continues to sit at the heart of every brand’s post-pandemic strategy, the new store points right at couture’s immediate saving grace as we brace for another recession: young buyers.

Under 30, wide-eyed and just as influenceable as they are influential, millennial shoppers have given couture a new lease on life in recent years. With spending power estimated to hit 45% of the global market for personal luxury goods by 2025 according to a study by Bain & Company, they make up about a quarter of brands like Maison Rabih Kayrouz’s client lists and buy up to 20 dresses per order; four times what their predecessors left their appointments with.

Not put off by couture’s increasing lack of wearability, these entrepreneurs, celebrities as well as daughters and wives of wealthy businessmen alike have acclimated to couture’s ongoing war between art, dress and profitability, seeing to it that “bespoke” and “custom-made” become increasingly recurring mentions in media coverage from the red carpet to street style. So while the old guard are forced to review their preference for stealth wealth, discretion and practicality in the face of this changing consumer landscape, Balenciaga’s shop will open its doors to all and is expected to stock pieces that “don’t require multiple fittings and extensive alterations.” See you there?