Fashion houses hire multiple designers to create various lines of clothing, accessories, and jewelry. France is the birthplace of haute couture and many well-known couturiers bear the names of their founders. Fashion houses protect and promote their brands and designers work for years before their designs are considered runway-worthy.
A fashion house or maison couture is a parent company that hires numerous fashion designers to produce a variety of lines. Many houses produce haute couture and ready-to-wear lines of clothing, along with shoes, bags, jewelry, and other accessories. Typically, a house has a flagship brand of the same name, but it may also control several other brands that are targeted at different market regions. Main line products tend to be premium in cost, especially in the case of garments that are custom designed for specific customers.
France, and specifically Paris, is generally seen as the home of international fashion, and France is also the nation that gave birth to haute couture. Historically, dressmakers worked alone and sometimes with assistants who performed basic sewing tasks. A French draper was the first to put together a fashion house, in which several designers worked under his supervision to develop a clothing line. He called his establishment a maison couture, and people began using the terms “house” or “couturier” to refer to similarly organized establishments.
Some well known examples of couturiers include Chanel, Givenchy, Yves St. Laurent, Kenneth Cole, Alexandar McQueen, Prada, Versace and Armani among many others. Many of these firms bear the names of their founders, and several are dynastic businesses, with multiple generations of the family working in various divisions within the house.
Fashion houses take their brands very seriously and go to great lengths to protect and promote them. Each house wants to create innovative fashion that will help it stand out from the pack, and also wants to develop a signature look for each season that is instantly recognizable. When designers from a house come together to develop looks for the new season, they talk about the history of the brand, the direction they want to take the brand in, and the themes they want to play with in the upcoming season. Each designer produces a variety of items, and the head of the house decides which items will be produced and marketed to the public.
Employment in the fashion industry can be brutal, and working for a major fashion house is no exception. Designers typically attend art school and put in years of work before they are allowed to submit designs for consideration by their supervisors, and these supervisors have years of experience in the fashion industry. Fashion is definitely a lifetime career, as it can take a decade or more before designs are deemed runway-worthy.
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