Teaching Haute Couture In Fashion Schools

Not many people know that the term "haute couture" has a very specific legal meaning. Fashion design programs undoubtedly teach what it's supposed to mean, but for the general public outside the fashion schools, it simply means "high fashion."

In their minds, and in increasingly general usage, it refers to fashion designed for the very wealthy or those with a lot of prestige. And the designers and houses that create these fashions are described with the same term.

That's why a school like the Academy of Couture Art (ACA) in West Hollywood, California, is unique among American fashion schools. This institution is the only French haute couture academy in the United States, having been granted the right to use that description by the official Parisian governing body itself.

The members of the faculty are designers who regularly create their own collections and present them in Paris, and the fashion programs offered by the school adhere to the more strict definitions of haute couture. The school aims to blend the European couture style into the fashion system of the United States.

However worthy the goal of the Chambre Syndicale, the ACA, and other couture fashion schools, the "haute couture" genie may have escaped the bottle and might not be forced back in at this point.

The phrase has now been used so often to describe fashion programs and designs catering to the wealthy that it's likely not possible to return it to its original legal meaning.

The work of the ACA will undoubtedly be viewed as haute couture in the minds of the public, but so will the work of other designers and schools that aren't strictly entitled to the designation.

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