Edited image of Le drapage du corsage chez Worth. Paris, 1907. BOY-1085 © Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet
On September 6th and 7th, 2016, the ‘Fashion Systems and Global Perspectives’ class welcomed Dr. Veronique Pouillard as our first guest lecturer of the fall semester. Dr. Pouillard is a distinguished professor at the University of Oslo in the department of Archaeology, Conservation and History. She received her master’s degrees in history and philosophy, as well as her PHD in History from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. As a life long scholar Dr. Pouillard has focused her research on the business and cultural history of fashion and advertising in Paris, Brussels, and New York, and is a specialist on copyright law in fashion.
The first topic of Dr. Pouillard’s lecture covered the foundation of the fashion system in France, looking importantly at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Dr. Pouillard began her lecture by presenting a colorful description of Charles-Frederick Worth and his sumptuous fashion house, the House of Worth. The initial look into the workings of Worth’s business illustrated how Paris functions as a haute couture ecosystem, which benefits from a symbiosis between various experts and craftspeople (the designer, textile manufacturers, embroiderers, feather makers, fur suppliers, and more). The class then entered into a discussion of the challenges couturiers face including the profitability of haute couture and the threat of copying. The first lectured closed with Pouillard outlining the various undertakings of the Chambre Syndicale to organize and protect couture as an establishment, while always allowing the designers total creative freedom.
Dr. Pouillard’s second lecture focused on the internationalization of fashion, addressing when and how Haute Couture became globalized. Her discourse illuminated historic interactions of Haute Couture brands in France and the United States, using the pioneer in international couture, Jeanne Paquin, as an example of the challenges and rewards of global entrepreneurship. Dr. Pouillard outlined the financial obstacles of running branches overseas, including the large investment required to open a foreign branch and the exorbitant customs and tariffs. The discussion progressed to consider the cultural, artistic, and financial challenges couture brands faced when expanding. The most discouraging element that couturiers faced was copying, which sparked the need to take control of their unique designs, in effect setting in place the foundations for intellectual property rights that still govern fashion today. Dr. Pouillard’s lecture series provided our class with an engaging discussion of the cultural history of fashion in France and the early push towards globalization of Haute Couture. In conclusion our class looked at Paris, which to this day remains the global center Haute Couture largely due to the historic organizations, which cultivated fashion and encouraged couture to thrive to this day.
___________
Text: Chanel Host
Image: Le drapage du corsage chez Worth. Paris, 1907. BOY-1085 © Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet
Postproduction: Tala AlGhamdi
