Left: Sophie label ready-to-wear; Right: Christian Dior couture

The price of an Haute Couture creation can cost anywhere from $20,000 to well over $150,000 per ensemble. Yes, that is a crazy amount of cash! So much cash, in fact, that the number of repeat customers of Haute Couture is usually around 200 women per year. Only 200! Although many of the women who spend this amount on clothing do not attend the seasonal runway shows, some do, and it is fascinating to find out which countries these women are from—it’s sort of an index of where the world’s wealth is. The best clients from one season could be from Saudi Arabia, and the next season from Ireland or Russia.

Many people think this aspect of the fashion world means nothing to them, and they are wrong. Each season, the successful silhouettes, colors, fabrics, and styles are picked up the following seasons in affordable ready-to-wear collections. Within moments of the Parisian runway shows, copyists are busy at work making affordable versions for the world to wear.

Have you ever seen The Devil Wears Prada? There is a spectacular scene where Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) scolds her assistant Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) for laughing at the amount of attention given to the choice of color for an accessory. Ms. Priestley informs her assistant that the color of her worn-out and tired sweater (purchased at Target, or the like) was actually shown on the Parisian runways just a few years earlier. Without the runway shows, that specific color would have never made it down to ready-to-wear. Almost everything we wear today was originally presented to a wealthier clientele first and then “trickled down” to the average person.

Tags: Haute couture, Paris, ready-to-wear, Timothy Long

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