Couture houses cash in on fashion for a £25,000 dress

Ready-to-wear designer labels are so last year. As a new season of haute couture is unveiled, it's the top end of the market that is thriving

The stock market may be plunging, mega-corporations may be buckling and the super-rich may be feeling the pinch, but at least one act of shameless consumption is not going out of fashion.

As the autumn/winter haute couture season opens tomorrow, France's grandest fashion houses are finding that the sun did indeed shine on their summer collections. Sales have doubled at Christian Lacroix, Chanel recorded a 30 per cent rise and Emanuel Ungaro 40 per cent, while Yves Saint Laurent – after showing his final collection – announced a 70 per cent improvement.

Even at Christian Dior, where "we have a policy of never divulging [haute couture] sales figures"– presumably on the grounds of vulgarity – a spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that the increase is a double-digit figure."

Haute couture, in which every garment is hand-sewn, beaded, feathered, embroidered and over-embroidered by men and women (les petites mains) in white coats, is booming. And this at a time when sales of ready-to-wear designer clothes are depressed. So while the most fashion-conscious consumer appears to have drawn a line at spending £300 for a pair of off-the-peg designer trousers, or £700 for a jacket, the couture customer is parting with 10 times that for, say, a day suit.

Only about 300 core couture customers are thought to exist in the world, and another 100 or so who drop in each season in search of something special – a wedding dress for a daughter, for example. For such women, £10,000 for a little something from Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture is a drop in the ocean. Why not buy two? In fact, Gaultier's prices are more reasonable than most – the designer opened his house only five years ago and it remains small by comparison.

To know exactly the cost of a couture garment is impossible – only the woman privileged enough to buy one has access to the information. Broadly, however, one can expect to pay between £12,000 and £15,000 for a suit and between £17,000 and £25,000 for an evening dress.

If madame would like to adapt her chosen design, however – ask for authentic gems, say, as opposed to crystal embellishment – her couturier will be more than happy to oblige. At this point, the sky is the limit. In the past 10 years, more extravagant pieces have included a black silk jacket fastened with a large camellia crafted in diamonds the size of boiled sweets and a T-shirt constructed entirely out of tiny pearls. It is not unusual for between 200 and 300 hours of work to go into a garment.

Haute couture is succeeding, primarily, because the ready-to-wear collections have, more than ever before, become a flagrant publicity-seeking machine. Rumours are rife that certain designers pay celebrities to attend and/or wear their clothes while anyone with an ounce of sense knows that the brouhaha surrounding the season is, ultimately, aimed at promoting the image of a house, selling lucrative fragrance and accessories over and above mere clothes. To the initiated, this is uninviting.

More significant than this, though, is that the prices of ready-to-wear clothes are too high. With companies such as Zara, based in Spain, putting out expert copies before the originals that inspire them have reached the store, only a fool would shop on Bond Street when Oxford Circus will give them so much more for their money. It follows that if, through fair means or foul, the world and his wife now have access to most glamorous ready-to-wear designs, the elite won't touch them with a barge pole.

The world and his wife are unlikely to snap up an haute couture copy on the high street, however. In haute couture, individuality is key, whatever the price. And the point, above all else, is still the clothes.

Consider the words of Iain R Webb, fashion director of Elle magazine, describing Dior's spring/summer haute couture collection, by John Galliano. "From the first model wearing what looked like a four-foot high, shocking-pink yeti on her head to the very last who swished off the catwalk in a faded, rose pink and asparagus green ballgown, colour was everything. The collection was an immaculate mix of Russian peasant patchworks; Red Army overcoats, over-embroidered with baubles and bling-bling, and Picasso meets Bladerunner harlequins ..." Copy that, Top Shop, if you dare.

"Models," writes Mr Webb, "resembled delinquent runaways from Toyland." Even if the woman on the street is unlikely to seek such an image, it does serve to demonstrate that haute couture, while dressing the world's most demanding women, functions as a laboratory of ideas.

Without the commercial restraints of ready-to-wear, a designer is free to let his or her imagination run riot, no matter how expensive the end result might be. In Galliano's case, the laboratory has its roots in pure fantasy. He creates the most over-the-top, extreme and, of course, extravagant world imaginable. Likewise Lacroix. Others such as Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Emanuel Ungaro, Valentino and, of course, Yves Saint Laurent favour a more restrained approach.

More than 20 fittings can be needed to perfect a complex cut even though it might look deceptively simple. The legendary Cristobal Balenciaga spent years searching for what he described as "the perfect sleeve". Once he found the formula, a strict geometric solution, he took it to his grave.

Equally, a pared-down garment might hide detail in a hand-painted lining; gold chain might invisibly add weight to a hemline so a skirt hangs just so. And clothes are crafted in the most exotic of materials: fur, feathers, even fish skin. Anything approaching the politically correct is not tolerated.

The ready-to-wear product is suffering in the face of such individualised opulence. "The long-term outlook is, I fear, not good," writes Fay Weldon in the now defunct glossy biannual, The Fashion. "The politics of fashion are intricate, but what seems to be happening is the same as has happened already in publishing and music. The independents are forced to the financial wall, the conglomerates take over, and marketing rules. The inevitable result is that, with time, standards fall, diversity shrinks and creativity shrivels."

For now, haute couture is exempt from this. Its continued relevance is hotly debated – four years ago Pierre Berge, the long-term business partner of Yves Saint Laurent, said "couture is dead" – but it is fiercely protected. The employees who staff the ateliers have their own, highly active union. Currently, they are blocking the attempts of the fashion giant Pinault-Printemps-Redoute to sell Yves Saint Laurent haute couture now that its originator has stepped aside.

More generally, France has always been proud of haute couture, its most glamorous loss leader, and of presiding over the world's most accomplished seamstresses, lace-makers, embroiderers and fur, leather and feather specialists. With this in mind, if women are out there buying the clothes, and so keeping the industry alive, then who are we to complain? After all, when times are hard they can always be relied upon to swathe themselves in luxury.

The last word goes to Emanuel Ungaro, torn away from his atelier as he puts the finishing touches to his collection due to be shown in Paris on Wednesday. "Haute couture is a laboratory and the backbone of a couture house," he says. "It has been my life, my passion, my dream during my career. My quest for seduction is ongoing: who doesn't want to seduce?"