In 1868, Worth was instrumental in the creation of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne, and as we all know, once a French syndicat (union) gets involved, nothing will ever change again. Which is why all the Parisian haute couture houses, from Chanel to Dior to Yves Saint Laurent and beyond, have followed the same basic model—create a look, imbue it with Parisian exclusivity, and make people worship you.
In short, Charles Worth invented not only haute couture but the whole concept of luxury branding, which has been as much a part of Paris’s appeal for the last century as the legs of its Eiffel Tower and those of its can-can dancers.
France has a habit of denying foreigners credit for things they wish they had invented themselves, like the guillotine and the baguette.* Charles Worth, though, is an exception. Today, Paris’s haute couture industry is completely open about its debt to this Englishman. The highly prestigious École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, where big names like André Courrèges, Jean-Louis Scherrer and Yves Saint Laurent studied, runs a history course entitled La Mode depuis Worth (fashion since Worth). Not ‘since Louis XIV or even ‘since Chanel’—since Worth. Quite an accolade.
The only stain on this shimmering cloak of honour is one that Parisians have made by accident. They find it very difficult to say ‘th’, and can’t believe that a word with ‘or’ in the middle should rhyme with fleur. They therefore have a nasty habit of mispronouncing the name of their English benefactor as ‘wart’.
Ich bin un Parisien
These days, Parisian fashion is schizophrenic. On the one hand, brands like Chanel, Dior, Chloé, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy are seen as the ultimate in Parisian chic. On the other, they all hire, or have hired, foreigners to create or nurture this Parisianitude—big names like Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and the late Alexander McQueen.
Granted, England brings in foreign managers to train its football team, but that is precisely to get them playing like stylish foreigners rather than clodhopping Englishmen. Surely handing the image of a Parisian fashion house over to a foreign designer is like a top sushi restaurant recruiting a Belgian chef?
Well, yes and no. Take Karl Lagerfeld, for example, directeur artistique for Chanel, the Parisian fashion brand par excellence. He was born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt in Hamburg, and speaks French with an almost comedy German accent, popping up in the media like some modern incarnation of a Prussian envoy to the court of Louis XIV. How, you might justifiably ask, could he possibly represent—embody, even—Chanel, which he has done almost continuously since 1982? Well, for a start, behind that accent lurks a grammatically impeccable and very witty French. Secondly, in his black-and-white formal outfits, with their touches of silver, he seems to have adopted classical elegance as his everyday lifestyle. And thirdly, for all his eccentricities, Lagerfeld is a consummate professional. Since his arrival on the Paris scene in 1959, he has been artistic director of several fashion houses, and is credited with salvaging two of them—Chloé and Chanel—from an imminent slide into obscurity. Under his directorship, Chloe became the chic brand of the mid-’60s, and was seen hugging the figures of Jackie Onassis, Brigitte Bardot and Grace Kelly, aka Princess of Monaco.
To achieve this, Karl did much more than bring a German touch to French couture—which was, in fact, the last thing the French brands were looking for. They wanted a designer who would make their clothes look even more Parisian, and his or her nationality was a secondary consideration.
Grafting foreign talent on to Paris fashion is a complex process that was explained to me by Susan Oubari, a Paris-based Californian who works as a go-between for American buyers and Parisian fashion houses, especially during the twice-yearly rush of Fashion Week. ‘It doesn’t matter what nationality they are,’ Susan told me. ‘If a foreign designer, or any designer, is to be a success, they have to be able to work within the structure of the company. They need to get on with the boss, who will be a pure businessman, work with the creative people, and keep the financial department happy. They might be forced to compromise on some of their designs, or make way-out designs fit a very down-to-earth budget.’
And these Anglo-German designers don’t get hired just because the French think they will be more realistic about the business side of things, either. ‘The important thing,’ Susan emphasized to me, ‘is for the designer to be able to go into the archives, and mix the old with the new. They have to study old collections, understand what the brand is about, and look at the reasons for its past success.’
German designer Karl Lagerfeld may look like an action doll and talk like a Prussian Duke, but he is the essence of Paris fashion, known by the French as ‘le Kaiser de la mode’.
It’s rather like taking a classic car and designing a model that today’s drivers will want. The new model can’t turn its back on the past—it has to capitalize on it. Lagerfeld’s Chanel designs are therefore not pure Lagerfeld, they’re carefully crafted über-Chanel.
And the traffic isn’t all one-way. The fashion house, and Paris itself, leave their mark on the designer. Karl Lagerfeld, the longest-serving of the big-name foreign designers in Paris, has been turned into a French institution. He was invited to design a coin to celebrate the centenary of Coco Chanel’s birth, he has appeared on a special-edition French Diet Coke bottle, and he has even been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, which as the award’s statutes put it, is usually given to those who have shown twenty-five years of eminent merit in the service of the Nation’. In short, the fashion industry
