Haute Couture

An Explanation to Haute Couture.

The term "haute couture" is derived from the French language, where haute means high (or elegant), and couture means dressmaking. The term often represents the business of designing, creating, and selling custom-made, high fashion, women's clothes. Haute couture is an overly misused phrase, despite having very specific rules for qualification.

Haute couture garments are created as a one-off piece for a specific client. They are at the top level of hand-made, custom fashion design and clothing construction, made by a couture design house. These garments are made specifically for the client's’ body size and stance. These exclusive, made-to-measure clothes are carefully interlined, and stay taped and fitted to perfection for the client. They have the unique ability to generate tremendous publicity for a design house, which often leads to higher sales in the designer's ready-to-wear collections; this tends to include simplified, more affordable versions of the couture pieces. Simply put, wearing haute couture is an aspirational symbol of power and prestige.