Is There Room for Fashion at the Paris Haute Couture Shows?
PARIS, July 22 — What with a white-smocked Andre Leon Talley squiring around a crew from ABC, another from the BBC following Anna Wintour, and Puff Daddy simultaneously promoting his new record and posing for a fashion shoot by Annie Leibovitz, all at the same late-night party, the autumn haute couture shows certainly were the media equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. And this should have pleased no one more than Bernard Arnault. It was Mr. Arnault, the chairman of the French luxury conglomerate LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who put John Galliano at Dior and Alexander McQueen at Givenchy, thus bringing to a couple of aging fashion houses, and to haute couture, a new sense of excitement. You don’t have to dwell on how important this was, or how much money LVMH started pouring into couture. But nobody expects to make money selling $30,000 dresses. That’s not what haute couture exists for. It’s to generate publicity for all the other products, perfume, for instance, that a compan
