“The Glorious Tradition,” by Katherine Betts, was originally published in the December 1995 issue of Vogue.

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The photographs are famous: Lisa Fonssagrives posing for Irving Penn in Balenciaga’s petal dress. The couturiers are stars: Karl Lagerfeld striding triumphantly down the runway amid a flood of flashbulbs; the flurry of media attention when John Galliano inherited the venerable House of Givenchy. And the controversy is both inevitable and unending: a steady stream of stories questioning the future of haute couture, a litany of complaints about its frivolity, exclusivity, and expense. Ever since World War II, when Christian Dior jolted Paris fashion out of its wartime slump with his New Look, couture repeatedly has had to save itself from extinction. Its demise was first proclaimed when French ready-to-wear hit the market in the sixties. Later, during the oil crises of the seventies, Time magazine announced that couture was not dead but “breathing very hard.” Most recently, The Wall Street Journal warned that many of France’s remaining eighteen couture houses probably “won’t survive in the face of growing international competition.”

So what keeps this craft alive? Who provides the emergency resuscitation at each economic downturn? Aside from exceptional moments such as the birth of a new house (think of Christian Lacroix in 1987), couture survives on its own mystique, a visual, oral, and tactile history that has been passed down from generations of artisans since Frederick Worth first set up shop in 1858. It’s a history half-cloaked in secrecy, since each couture house, like a tribe, maintains a code of silence. Couturiers protect their clients, who, in turn, are loath to reveal the price they pay for a dress. And even the seamstresses and the craftsmen, the real muscle behind the business, are reluctant to disclose the minutiae of a meticulous tradition: one year to create the fabric, 160 hours to turn a jacket, 55 hours to sew a skirt, 30 hours to craft a silk corsage, 150 hours for a dress, 45 hours for a pair of shoes, 100 hours for a hat.

At a moment when couture is under attack yet again, the voices that resonate in the workrooms, the studios, the back rooms, and the fitting rooms—the sewers, the craftsmen, the couturiers, and the clients—speak in defense of their craft.

Life in the Atelier

François Lesage, embroiderer: The premiers—or sewers—are like the Jean-Francois Champollion of the haute couture. He was the guy who taught the Egyptians how to read hieroglyphics. The sewers interpret the sketches of the couturiers; they bring them to life.

Cécile Ouvrard, head of a Christian Lacroix atelier: A sketch is just an allure; it shows only the attitude. After that it has to be constructed. I remember when I got here, Mr. Lacroix gave me a sketch to make a pattern and I said, “Oh my God, what is this?” It was unreadable; the lines were flying in every direction. I asked him, and he said, “Make your interpretation, and after that we will see.”

Jeaninne Ouvrard, head ofa Christian Lacroix atelier: With Mr. Lacroix we work more with cultural images and gestures than we do with sketches. I remember we were working on a dress and he said, “In the back it should go up like this.” And I said, “Oh yes, like a nineteenth-century washerwoman pulling her skirt up around her in the river.”

Lagerfeld: What happens inside the garment is more important than the outside. With modern couture, you show it like showbiz on the runway, and the rest happens in the atelier. It’s an inside story.

Cécile Ouvrard: The first wedding dress I did, Jeaninne came out of the studio and said, “OK, I got the wedding dress.” I said, “Where’s the sketch?” She said, “There is no sketch; we just make a meringue!”

Paule Gayrard, Chanel seamstress: It’s not easy to find work now in the haute couture; only Chanel really has any work. Now, for seamstresses, if you’re 40 and out of a job, forget it. It’s finished. In Mlle Chanel’s time, there were so many of us, there were six ateliers, there was even an atelier for hats! And the work was very supple. It was just wool tweed; there was no lining or canvas facing. She liked it like that; it was easier to wear. Now everything is difficult—satin, velvet, chiffon linings. It’s a question of fashion; Mr. Karl likes his fashion more form-fitted.

Karl Lagerfeld: The struggle is to make the technique of couture modern. Some seamstresses are old-fashioned. They’re stuck in a very conventional way of doing things—the way a jacket falls, the construction. I’m trying to change that.

Paquito, head of Chanel atelier: We have so many orders we have to take interim people sometimes, but it’s hard to find people who do this work well. You have to really love this métier to sit there all day sewing. Without the seamstresses, though, what would we do? They have hands of gold.

Christian Lacroix: The couture risks dying more because of the lack of craftsmen and seamstresses than anything else.

Colette Maciet, head of a Givenchy atelier: I started working for Mlle Chanel when I was fourteen. There were 1,500 seamstresses working in the ateliers, and there were ten to fifteen ateliers. Now when a seamstress retires, she is not replaced. And young people aren’t interested. They have no patience. They all want to be designers.

Paule Gayrard: At Chanel the workers stay a long tome. We are part of the furniture.

Christian Lacroix: Couture is a story of tribes—families, really—groups of people who get along and are friends. For me it’s the theater that has helped me find the artisans that make my craft modern. The bridge between the theater and the couture is obvious because like the theater, couture is a preparation for an exceptional moment.

Creativity Then And Now

Paquito: When I came to France, couture was very overworked. There was Balmain, who made the tight suit, and Jacques Fath. And Balenciaga, he was the king. Couture clients were a lot more precious then. Now they’re more modern, like everybody else. Now it is still Chanel, but modern. The proportions, the form, it’s not the little boxy jackets; Karl changed all that.

Colette Maceet: Every couturier has a different way of working. Chanel never worked with sketches, and Lagerfeld does. Mr. Givenchy worked only on fitting models. Every house is different. I remember working for Chanel; it was terrifying. We would come back from lunch and see her in the rue Cambon coming out of the Ritz, and we would hide! We were scared to see her in the street. She didn’t like to see pregnant women or women in pants. And she was so humiliating to the seamstresses. The night before a collection she would make us cry; she would make us change everything on a finished suit. It would be perfect, but not for her.

Sophie Veron, couture fabric manufacturer: Mlle Chanel was tough. I would go and see her, and she would say, “I want it like this.” And you had to do it. Christian Lacroix is the same. He says, “No, don’t show me this.” We give them what they want. We have to; it’s a service business.

Cécile Ouvrard: When I came to Lacroix in 1987, Christian had just opened the house. There was nothing, not even a box of pins. But that first couture collection is engraved in my memory. It was so extraordinary; it was the moment when the couture was reborn. It was like a shock compared to other houses, where couture collections were nice but they weren’t delirious. Lacroix’s dresses are like paintings; they’re incredible, like museum pieces. I’ll always remember once he said, “For me, too much is never enough.”

Philip Treacy, couture milliner: Karl Lagerfeld has the same fearlessness in fashion that Elsa Schiaparelli had. She had wit and light-heartedness that very few people have. It’s difficult to make a lamb chop look glamorous, but she did. Karl is very clever. I love the idea of a little bit of originality on the runway.

Gianni Versace: Every couturier thinks that the couture dies when they die. That’s ridiculous. As long as people want quality and refinement, couture will last. I think it’s ridiculous to have the equivalent of the Concorde in fashion and not use it.

Karl Lagerfeld: There’s a mystique about the haute couture. But one should never analyze the unnecessary, just enjoy it. As Voltaire said, if you have to explain it, it’s not worth an explanation.

John Galliano: Couture is not about constipated beading. It can be the most heavenly simple black dress and be beautifully cut and feel divine on the body and not cost as much as a rhinestone bustier.

Gianni Versace: Couture soesn’t have to be all done by hand. You can use a machine, too. Paris is full of taboos. They resist: “Oh, it’s plastic, it can’t be couture.” That mentality is not modern.

Sophie Veron: What’s extraordinary is the way couturiers transform the fabrics. Like a chef who makes a new recipe by marrying incongruous ingredients and flavors. It’s how they make the fabric speak that makes it couture.

The Future of Craftsmanship

Anne Corbière, hand-weaver: There’s a stigma attached to fashion, especially couture. People think you have to justify it all the time. Americans either accept it or reject it, but in France people actually express themselves through it.

François Lesage: There’s only one city in the world where you can pick up the phone and get a 1930s embroidery by Vionnet in 48 hours. Couture isn’t made only by the couturier and the premier. There are the craftsmen, and if they disappear the couture disappears. Unfortunately these people are old. The new generation is there, but the budgets are reduced. Where we once made 150 pieces a year, now we do only 50 or 60.

Raymond Massaro, shoemaker: I’m very content to have lived in the old system and the new system. I like couture now because creatively it moves so fast. It’s exhausting, but it’s much more exciting. Twenty years ago everything started changing with planes, travel, and transport. Maybe in 20 years we will go even faster. People like Karl Lagerfeld force us to renew faster and faster.

Philip Treacy: People, when they buy a hat, they can’t explain why they want to buy it or why they want it, but they do. It’s like chocolate. It’s just an expression of what a person wants to say about herself. Hats make you stand out, and that’s why people wear them. They have an allure, something intangible. Can you imagine Henry VIII without a hat?

François Lesage: I think it’s a sin when you have a certain talent, not to pass it down to the next generation. My parents bought the House of Lesage in 1924; I took over when my father died in 1949. I’ve done over 27,000 samples of embroidery here.

Pearl, corsetmaker: This craft isn’t taught anymore. Unfortunately we don’t have materials or machinery from the nineteenth century. All that information has been lost, so I had to kind of teach myself.

André Lemarié, feather craftsman: This house was founded by my grandmother 115 years ago. She worked with her hands. I’m third generation. In the beginning it was just feathers; then my mother started making feather hats, then flower hats. We made the first camellia for Chanel in 1960. Mostly we do feathers. We curl them, sew them, glue them. Like all métiers, this one is cyclical. Every two years feathers come back into fashion.

François Lesage: Our metier is like being kids in a candy store. It’s as if we went to the atelier of Braque when Saint Laurent made his Braque collection in 1987, or to India with Ungaro, or to El Escorial with Balenciaga.

Gustav Zumsteg, president ofAbraham fabrics: Now couture is a media spectacle to fill the magazines and television screens. The couturiers still need to promote the licencees and the perfumes, but the producers of the materials—what we are—with all the craftsmanship behind us, are victims of the situation.

Raymond Massaro: Chanel was the first to do accessories in the haute couture, but I also worked with Grès and my father worked with Vionnet before the war. My father was one of four brothers, and they were all bottiers.

Couture and Its Clients

27-year-old European client: I bought my first couture ball gown when I was 20. I buy only for big occasions, two or three gowns a year. For everyday, it’s too expensive. At $15,000 to $20,000 for a dress, I don’t think anybody has the money to buy a whole wardrobe anymore. It’s more expensive every year, too. That’s why if you’re young you go to someone who will give you a good price.

Parisian client: I borrow dresses for big occasions, but I buy for dinners and very dressy lunches. I’m a writer, so I don’t need many day clothes. I buy one or two a season. Couture is an immense luxury, but once you get accustomed to it you can’t wear anything else.

John Galliano: Couture can be more affordable, depending on the fittings involved, the fabrics, the finish.

Paquito: The clients are very demanding; they know. They say, “Paquito, no, the shoulder is too high, too tight here.” There is an intimate trust between us. There’s this whole system of flattering the client, making her look good. If there are big hips, we let it out so it doesn’t pull. If her posture is hunched over, we make the shoulder square. It’s like plastic surgery.

27-year-old European client: What’s exciting is that it fits like a glove. Couture clothes show the good parts of your body and hide the bad.

John Galliano: Women today understand that couture is about a woman’s body, being a woman’s accomplice: Disguise a fanny, tighten a bust.

Sophie Veron: What’s troubling about haute couture is that it doesn’t correspond to women anymore. Who has time for three fittings?

27-year-old European client: I don’t like the fittings. They take too much time. But I like to give my opinions on color and fabrics.

Colette Maciet: Some clients need seven or eight fittings. They change a millimeter here or there, and then in the next fitting it goes back to the way it was. Thankfully, there aren’t many like that.

Raymond Massaro: Barbara Hutton would order 150 pairs of shoes at a time. There was a whole room at the Ritz reserved only for her trunks of clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Times have changed; the orders don’t come like that anymore.

Janine Ouvrard: I’ve been as far as Los Angeles to deliver wedding dresses. We make special crates to ship them in so that we don’t have to fold the dress. If the train is longer than eight meters, two of us have to go in order to iron it. Once, the crate wouldn’t fit through the doors of the airport, so we had to call the police and get a special escort onto the runway.

Cécile Ouvrard: When we deliver dresses to the Middle East, it’s ten times more work, because it’s so grand there. One bride had a silver lamé dress, and it started to pour rain and the silver threads in the train started to shrink with the humidity. I thought, “Oh my God, 700 hours of work disappearing before my eyes!”

Philip Treacy: Somebody came by last week, chauffeur-driven limo and everything. She had 20 sketches from the couture and she wanted 20 hats. That’s the old way. Very few people do it like that anymore. There used to be 7,000 hatmakers in London; now there are only seven.

Colette Maciet: There’s a certain intimacy in the fittings, especially when we go to the client’s house to deliver clothes. Queen Noor was a client, and she was completely different in her home—so open and warm. We’re close to the clients; they ask us our advice. And when they’re used to one fitter they don’t like to change.

Cécile Ouvrard: We know everything. I made Sigourney Weaver’s Oscar dress. It took 150 hours. I know because we mark everything down on a special piece of paper—the exact measurements, how much fabric, which buttons, the pattern, the number of hours, the fabric manufacturer.

Colette Maciet: The clients are curious about Mr. Galliano coming to Givenchy, but what they’re really worried about is if we’re staying here. Because they come to the couture houses for the couturier, but also for the seam- stresses. Also, they’re a bit shy, you know. They live in a cocoon and they like to be coddled.

Catherine Delondre, head of a Givenchy atelier: I’ve been at Givenchy for 33 years, and it really hasn’t changed much. We have some clients that have been coming for 30 years. We’ve had such a loyal clientele here, you know. Audrey Hepburn, of course, but also Rose Kennedy came here and Jackie, before the White House. With Galliano it will be different, that’s for sure. Different clients, but also different technique.

François Lesage: In the eighties women wanted to be seen; now they hide themselves. They arrive in these minimal clothes. Now the snobbism is to buy cheaply. If we continue like this, your kids won’t know what leather soles on shoes are–there will only be Nikes.

Gianni Versace: It can be minimal and be couture, of course. Remember, Balenciaga was the greatest couturier of this century, and he was so pure. Fashion follows life. We simplify our lives now, so we simplify couture, too.

John Galliano: Our generation does understand the cut of an amazing jacket. We go to the flea market or buy a Vionnet dress at a secondhand store. Couture is as relevant to us as a white T-shirt.