Memory is creation without end, to create means to remember.
Since its birth in the 19th century, Haute Couture has stood as the highest representation of human creativity and craftsmanship. It ignites the imagination of sartorial artists and guides skilled craftsmen and fashion designers whose legacy ties back to the beginnings of human history. This connection is stored and unlocked through memory – a powerful tool that recalls a time when creativity was limitless and pure.
Haute Couture transcends mere fashion, embodying an ulterior form of artistic expression. The human body becomes the personification of an idea, an emotion, or a memory, transforming itself into the artist’s canvas. By being centering concepts and artistry, Haute Couture detaches fashion from its consumerist connotations. Instead, it offers an introspective and anthropological analysis within the fashion industry, presenting it as creative expression from an artistic perspective. Peeling back commercialization's layers makes space to explore fashion's essence as a manifestation of cultural, social, and individual identity. This enriches our understanding of fashion’s intrinsic and spiritual values, beyond market forces.
Heritage-Creativity Interplay
When thinking of new ideas for upcoming collections, couturiers often look at their brand’s history and cultural heritage for inspiration. Fashion and cultural heritage go hand in hand during the creative process. It’s a dynamic chain where legacy and craftsmanship reinvent heritage into modern design. Fashion heritage encompasses more than just identifying objects, practices, and values. It serves as an anthropological category, representing a complex network of social processes, cultural practices, and collective imaginaries. These historical layers combine meanings, traditions, and elements inherited from the past.
Understanding fashion heritage requires seeing it as a social context and anthropological influence where agents and processes shape its significance. Heritage is transmitted through historical and intergenerational information, material or abstract, as a legacy from the past. This legacy plays a key role in the development of the fashion sector, especially in couture.
Heritage and Memory
The past serves as inspiration for present creation, thus leaving its mark on the future. Remembrance provides a natural source of creative ideas, making heritage an outlet for inspiration. This cyclical process broadens the creative landscape for future generations. Fashion, as we know it, is the material testament of who we are and what we have been. It represents a never-ending cycle where time becomes blurred, with trends continually evolving. Therefore memory, as a deliberate act of remembering, becomes a form of willed creation. Memory is creation without end, to create means to remember.
Creation is tradition; nothing is ever truly new. Every idea reacts to and builds on past ideas and objects. Our identity, therefore, is shaped by our past. Who we are now is influenced by our preceding generations. Our identity is not solely our invention but also what we have inherited down to a cellular level, informed by memories. The things that transcend generations pertain to certain values and principles. As we mature, we begin to identify with these values out of necessity. Necessity creates new luxuries and inventions with a conscience.
When couturiers ideate for new collections, they access a wide repertoire of ideas and inspiration from the mind. The mind, thus, acts as a middle ground to interpret sensory experiences. This process is referred to in art and psychology as “involuntary memory” a term coined by Marcel Proust. It describes when a particular sense, like scent, evokes a specific experience, memory, time, or place.
This phenomenon highlights the strong connection between mind and body, where sensory experiences trigger past memories. It’s up to the couturier to interpret these slight signals and materialize an idea through memory. This process is ever-present in haute couture, where abstract signals are open to interpretation by creators and observers alike.
As Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren said in a Vogue interview for Viktor & Rolf’s Fall 2024 Couture: “The viewer can let his mind wander, make free associations...we offer something that is a starting point for someone’s own train of thought.” Their collection was inspired by a memory from twenty years ago when they created their second couture collection. It combined a sense of childishness and innocence with their strong brand identity, creating absurd silhouettes that recall a different time while maintaining contemporary style.
Similarly, Schiaparelli’s FW24 collection paid homage to memory. Creative director Daniel Roseberry mentioned in a Vogue interview that, “[he] had this dream of finding a forgotten couture collection in the basement of Elsa’s country house”. His intention was to transport people to a different time, drawing inspiration from 1950s silhouettes. Whether a tea-soaked madeleine, as Proust says, or dreaming of a different time, physical abd metaphysical experiences interpreted by the mind open a wide repertoire of inspiration. As Marius Kwint once explained, “Human memory has undergone a mutual evolution with the objects that inform it.” Objects evoke memory and the way we choose to remember shapes our physical environment.
When the past is declared as a source of inspiration, we witness a revival. This involves rethinking a specific time period with present awareness, reshaping its objects through memory. The value of the archival revival lies in its informal transversality; the kaleidoscopic range of opportunities for the use and interpretation of their contents. Designers' mental and physical archives serve as instruments of memory, offering a kaleidoscopic range of opportunities for creative exploration.
Couturiers
Several couturiers have left a lasting mark on fashion, blurring the lines between art and fashion. Masters like John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen, and Olivier Saillard have fused contemporary avant-garde designs with classic archetypes. Their innovations come from knowledge of historical techniques and collaborations with artisans.
John Galliano’s Maison Margiela 'Artisanal' FW21 collection involved Neo-Alchemical processes which subjected the fabrics to processes of elemental and physical transmutation, which they communicated through a film. His SS24 Artisanal Collection created one of the biggest moments in fashion over the past decade, by playing off themes of ritual and dress. Jean Paul Gaultier and Alexander McQueen are known for using ancient textiles and working closely with craftsmen to turn creative ideas into moving art. Olivier Saillard’s performance “Moda Povera” applied Haute Couture techniques to everyday garments, focusing on the memories they held.
At the core of it all lies the magical interactive flow between heritage and creativity. Operating across all aspects of the fashion industry, encompassing creation, design, production, and communication. Leading fashion couturiers introducing innovative perspectives and meanings, exploring fresh methodologies and approaches while integrating social, political, and cultural considerations into the design ethos. This infusion regenerated the design process, ultimately transforming heritage into contemporary design.
