Couture visits high street

The distinction between the two blurred with bridge brands; and now with more and more big names in fashion opting to go the retail way, haute couture is not as elitist as it used to be

Once upon a time, there was high fashion. And then, there was high street. And never the twain would meet. High fashion was all about couture, about very rich women, who sat at the front rows of fashion shows (the "social X-rays", as Tom Wolfe put it, because they were so thin), and super-models.
The high street was about good quality, moderately fashionable clothes that were affordable. Even when they were expensive, they cost a fraction of the cost of a couture outfit (which cost around $60,000 and upwards those days).
But, over the last decade, a strange thing has happened. The borders between high fashion and the high street have blurred.

BRIDGING GAPS: Ralph Lauren's Chaps line costs less than the original

To be fair, it started a long time ago. It was Yves Saint Laurent who famously announced that he was abandoning haute couture and would only sell ready-to-wear at boutiques that he would call Rive Gauche. Saint Laurent changed his mind and went back to couture but his Rive Gauche stores told designers that they could make clothes that would be sold off the peg and still retain their credibility. After all, if Saint Laurent, the greatest designer of his generation, could do it, why couldn't everybody else?
In the Seventies, inspired by Saint Laurent, all great designers started opening stores selling ready-to-wear. These clothes were always expensive but they cost much less than the couture lines. The prices, however, were vastly in excess of the high street so some kind of distinction endured.
Then, the Americans got in on the act. Such designers as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Bill Blass and (later) Donna Karan did fancy clothes for rich people. But their real money came from the ready-to-wear clothes they made for middle America. These were sold as designer garments but the price difference between the high street and, say, a Calvin Klein outfit was only about, say, 100%, compared to the 2,000% difference between high street and couture.
As label mania spread, the designers created so-called bridge lines which bore their names but were distinguished from the main lines by little distinctions. For instance, Donna Karan, New York was the main line. DKNY was the bridge line. Ralph Lauren Polo cost much more than Ralph Lauren Chaps.
Often, you had to really understand fashion to recognise the distinction. For instance, Giorgio Armani with a black label was the main line. The same logo on a white label was the version that went to department stores (Calvin Klein still does something similar). And, eventually, the likes of Armani created new brands. Emporio Armani was cheaper (now, it's for younger people); and Armani Exchange was the great man's stab at the Gap/Banana Republic market.

PIONEER: Yves Saint Laurent, the first to start selling ready-to-wear

But the real breakthrough came with the growth of such fashion-forward chains as Topshop, Zara and H&M. Fashion works to a strange timeline. When clothes are shown on the runway, they have only just been designed. It takes months to translate those clothes into mass-produced garments that will reach the shops. The trendy high street chains took the clothes shown on these ramps, tweaked them slightly and then rushed them into production. So the new Gucci look could be in Topshop or Zara within a few weeks of it being unveiled on the catwalk - and much before it hit the Gucci shop.
What's more, a Gucci jumper that cost, say, $2,000 in the Gucci store would be knocked off by a high street chain for $200. Yes, the fabric would be cheaper or the outfit would be badly finished. But it would still look the same.
Next, the fashionable high street chains started getting big-name designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Viktor and Rolf to do lines especially for them. At first, it seemed like a joke but the designers soon learned that, a) this helped their names gain popularity with a new demographic; and b) there was money it. A big designer with 200 outlets all over the world will make, say, 5,000 units of a dress. But a dress designed for Zara or H&M will go into production with a starting figure of 200,000 to 250,000 units. Volume made up for low prices.
And now, the lines between high fashion and high street have eroded so completely that it is almost comical.
For instance, Carine Roitfeld, the former editor for French Vogue and a cutting-edge stylist, who is a bigger brand in France than Anna Wintour (of US Vogue) is in America, has just launched a collection for the Japanese high street brand Uniqlo. The clothes are cheap. The dresses are about $200. And Roitfeld is defensive about the step down. "People think I'm very snob [sic]," she told the New York Times. "No! Me, I'm very open!"
Except that her idea of fashion and clothes may not be the same as yours or mine. Uniqlo told her to make the clothes machine-washable, which perhaps came as a bit of a shock to Roitfeld. "Me, I give everything to the dry-cleaning, so for me, it was a new way of thinking."
Which, I guess, sums up the high street world that high fashion has now waded into.