WITH the countdown on to the start of the Couture shows in Paris on January 26, Didier Grumbach - president of the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt à Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode (aka the Chambre Syndicale) - has been giving the press a fashion history lesson.
"Couture is in fact not an industry, it is a savoir faire, a craft, and is a complement to ready-to-wear," he explains in an interview with the Taipei Times. "When haute couture was organised and structured the way it was in 1944, there was no ready-to-wear as we know it today. Everything was made for you. Creative ready-to-wear did not exist."
