Calendar and Media

French Fashion & Haute Couture

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · The Fashion Calendar and the Media

A dress on a rail is not yet fashion. It becomes fashion when it is shown, photographed, described and bought, and Paris built a whole apparatus for that: a calendar of shows, a press of magazines and critics, photographers who defined the look of each decade, department stores that brought fashion to the public, and a long partnership with cinema and literature. This chapter covers each of these and asks how the press helps to make a designer. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Calendar

The seasons

Paris holds women's ready-to-wear weeks twice a year, in spring (for the next autumn and winter) and in autumn (for the next spring and summer), with couture weeks in January and July and menswear weeks in January and June (check). Collections are shown months before they reach the shops.

The order

The "big four" weeks run in sequence: New York, London, Milan and then Paris, so that Paris ends the cycle. Being last is seen as a mark of status, and designers and buyers travel from city to city (check).

The venues

Shows are held in salons, museums, palaces, tents and unusual locations. The tents in the Louvre's Carrousel and Tuileries gardens became the centre of the shows from the 1990s, and the Grand Palais and other places are now used too (check). The venue is part of the message.

From salon to spectacle In the early 20th century a house showed its collection to buyers and clients in its salon, with models walking among the chairs. The idea of a staged public show grew through the century: Poiret toured his models (Chapter 3), the postwar houses held large presentations (Chapter 5), and from the 1990s the shows became media events with celebrities in the front row and online coverage. Today a show may last ten minutes and cost millions, and the audience that matters most is the one that sees pictures of it (Chapter 7).

The Magazines

Title (check each)Note
Vogue ParisThe French edition of Vogue began in the 1920s and became a showcase for the best photographers (check). It was edited at times by Edmonde Charles-Roux, later a prize-winning novelist, and Carine Roitfeld.
L'OfficielA fashion magazine founded in 1921 and aimed at the trade and the rich (check).
Marie ClaireA women's magazine launched in 1937 that reached a mass audience (check).
ElleFounded in 1945 by Hélène Lazareff, it brought fashion to a younger and wider readership and promoted ready-to-wear (check).
The newspapersLe Figaro and Le Monde have fashion pages, and the American trade paper Women's Wear Daily and the British critic Suzy Menkes, writing for the International Herald Tribune and Vogue, were highly influential (check).

Editors and critics have real power: their praise helps a young designer to find buyers and backers, and their criticism can hurt. The relationship between the press and the houses is close and, in part, financial, since the magazines depend on advertising from the same houses (check). That is a reason to read fashion journalism as a source with care (Chapter 10).

Photographers and Models

  • The photographers. Man Ray and Horst P. Horst worked in Paris in the 1930s. After the war Irving Penn photographed Dior's models, and Richard Avedon's picture of the model Dovima in a Dior gown with elephants at the Cirque d'Hiver in 1955 is one of the most reproduced of all fashion photographs (check). Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin made provocative pictures for Vogue Paris in the 1960s and 1970s that are admired and debated (check).
  • The mannequins. The first models were shop assistants and seamstresses who showed clothes to clients. In the 1950s a few became known by name. The supermodels of the 1990s, among them Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell, became celebrities in their own right. Inès de la Fressange was the first contract model of Chanel under Lagerfeld in the 1980s (check).
  • Diversity. Black models were rare on the Paris catwalks before the 1970s. Mounia, from Martinique, was a muse of Yves Saint Laurent from 1970s, and the Versailles show of 1973 used many Black models (Chapter 6, check). The industry has been criticised for the lack of variety in the size, age and ethnic origin of its models (check).
  • The rules. A French law of 2015 aimed to prevent very thin models from working, and a 2017 charter signed by LVMH and Kering set a minimum age for models and rules on conditions (check). Chapter 9 returns to the question of working conditions.

Department Stores

Store (check each)Note
Le Bon MarchéOpened in the 1850s and led by Aristide Boucicaut, it is often called the first modern department store, with fixed prices, free entry and a wide choice (check).
PrintempsFounded in 1865, and known for its fashion departments and its department of couture copies (check).
Galeries LafayetteFounded in 1894, with a famous glass dome built in 1912 (check).
La SamaritaineFounded in 1870, closed in 2005 and reopened in 2021 as a luxury shop and hotel under LVMH (check).

The stores made fashion available to the middle class and created the shopper as a type. Émile Zola's novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) is set in a fictional department store and gives a vivid picture of its power over its customers and its staff, which is useful for readers of French Literature (check).

Cinema and Fashion

  • Givenchy and Hepburn. The partnership between the designer and the actress Audrey Hepburn gave the house a worldwide image (Chapter 5).
  • Saint Laurent and Deneuve. Yves Saint Laurent designed the costumes worn by Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour (1967) and in other films, and she remained a friend and client (check).
  • The New Wave. Films of the French New Wave made clothes part of their look, and Chanel designed costumes for Last Year at Marienbad (1961) (check). French Film & Television covers these films.
  • Films about fashion. There are films and documentaries about Chanel, Saint Laurent and Dior, which should be treated as interpretations and checked against sources.
A British comparison London Fashion Week began in the 1980s under the British Fashion Council, and its place in the calendar between New York and Milan has made it an important showcase for young designers (check). British magazines and critics, from Suzy Menkes to Vogue UK, have a direct influence on Paris. In Edinburgh, the annual graduate fashion show of the Edinburgh College of Art is a regular showcase of new talent, and the city's department stores, including Jenners on Princes Street, played the part for Scottish shoppers that Le Bon Marché and Printemps did in Paris (check).
Check the details Fashion media change quickly, and several of the magazines and venues named here have changed owners, editors and places over time. Check the dates and names of editors and photographers against the publications and archives. Stories about famous pictures and shows are often retold in a polished form, and the circumstances of some photographs are disputed.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain the Paris fashion calendar to a newcomer in a short paragraph, and say why the order of the "big four" matters.

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Exercise 2

Test the claim "The fashion press makes and breaks designers" with the six questions.

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Exercise 3

Choose a famous fashion photograph and treat it as a source: what does it show, what does it leave out, and what else would you want to see?

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Quick Reference

  • Calendar: two ready-to-wear weeks, two couture weeks, two menswear weeks; Paris last of the big four
  • Magazines: Vogue Paris, L'Officiel, Marie Claire, Elle
  • Pictures: Man Ray, Horst, Penn, Avedon, Newton, Bourdin
  • Stores: Le Bon Marché, Printemps, Galeries Lafayette, La Samaritaine