Haute Couture, Ready-To-Wear, and Fast Fashion: A Brief Analysis
When it comes to high fashion, the first thing that comes to the imagination of the average consumer is probably the Fashion Show itself. The opulent festival of fabrics and excentric shapes is known not only for its beauty but for its lack of practicality for the quotidian. Aside from the notoriously artistic designs made of unusual materials such as Coperni's Sprayed-On Dress, the Dissolvable Dresses by Hussein Chalayan or the famous Iris Van Harpen's Splash Dress, there are many “basic” designs that most consumers wouldn't consider worth buying or useful.
However, who said these clothes were meant to be useful or even consumed by the masses the same way daily clothing is?
Fashion isn’t a necessity. It pulls at your heart. It’s a whim. You don’t need it. You want it.
— Marc Jacobs
According to the stylist, clothing is self-expression. Fashion, on the other hand, is something between a fairy tale and fantasy, representing transformation and change. That being said, it gets easier to understand the conceptual difference as day-to-day wear focuses on functionality (For example, appearing more professional, walking more comfortably, portraying elegance, etc.) while Fashion plays with imagination, creativity, and innovation. High Fashion, on the other hand, refers to a more sophisticated approach to this matter, highlighting exclusivity and manufacturing to express its luxury.
Ready-to-wear and couture present two different approaches to making clothing. While haute couture refers to handmade, unique and custom-made garments, ready-to-wear is clothing produced in large(er) quantities in a factory — which incidentally still always requires human hands — and is accessible to the general public because of its lower price.
— Esmee Blaazer for Fashion United News
Historically speaking, High Fashion was often seen as expensive and unachievable for usual consumers, to the point that mainly nobility and Royal Families could afford such privilege. Being clothing a sign of status and financial power due to its expensive price and exclusiveness, no wonder some kings and queens dedicated their lives to fashion and design such as Louis XIV, known as “The King of Couture”. High Fashion was, after all, made for High Society.
If you take a moment to analyse the Haute Couture scenery nowadays, you'll probably notice that not much has changed. The designs are made focusing on celebrities, royalty members, billionaires, and other influential society members, making use of artisanal work, fancy garments, and months (or even years) of handmade work with high-quality materials.
In contrast, people with less financial stability would rely on dupes and fake reproductions of original designs as they were more affordable and easier to acquire. , alongside the change of lifestyle of consumers and the research for a more practical approach to clothing, Ready-To-Wear (RTW) Fashion was born.
As far as it's known, the first RTW clothings were military uniforms. Those uniforms were mass-produced in the United States back in 1812 as a consequence of the American War having as a target, of course, male consumers. The next target came to be children, mainly riding clothes and beachwear (1868), and, at last, women (1860s), apparently due to the fact that RTW was more popular with men in comparison.
Different from High Fashion, Ready-To-Wear emphasized mostly function above appearance especially due to the high demand of clients and the Industrial Revolution, which brought more agility to the process of fabrication and selling of pieces. Due to that, is understandable how usual consumers might find Haute Couture an exaggeration and waste of fabric since they're not trained to see the art behind Fashion, but the practical utility of it. It took a while for luxury brands to get into the Ready-To-Wear market, changing its goal not only to utility but also visuals. For the notorious founder of Channel, that seems to be a wedding between design and movement. After all, fashion is inspiration and inspiration is everywhere.
"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street; fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."
— Coco Channel
However, Ready-To-Wear wasn't as achievable as expected since it was still a creation by known designers and produced for the runaway with good quality materials. It was faster to produce compared to High Fashion, of course, but not fast enough to satisfy the demand of the market for trendy designs. Due to that, Fast Fashion was embraced as the new era type of fashion.
Focusing less on the quality of materials and more on the visual appeal, Fast Fashion pieces are one of the most wasteful shares of the fashion industry due to the frequent changes in demands. Rather than being guided by seasons like most Haute Couture brands, this one relies a lot more on what's trendy at the moment, which leads to a constant refreshment of the catalogue. It is also a lot more affordable for the masses since its cost of production demands less from the companies responsible for the fabrication, just as its wide variety of options available turn the pieces less exclusive and, therefore, cheaper (according to the law of supply and demand).
It is valid to say that the lack of depth or personality put into those pieces makes them less of a statement and more like what it really is: a product.
All in all, the apparent hierarchy of High Fashion, Ready-To-Wear, and Fast Fashion reflects not only phases of styling culture but also the change in habits of consumption affected by technology at different levels. Those alterations also cause a lack of identification between those—fans of Fast Fashion can't see any use in High Fashion while the former can't see depth in Fast Fashion. Meanwhile, Ready-To-Wear has remained stable through the years for its timeless style and practicalness. At least, until the present day.
References
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BORRELLI-PERSSON, Laird. Marc Jacobs: Best Quotes From Vogue's Archives. https://www.vogue.com/article/marc-jacobs-best-quotes-from-archives.
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