Paris (AFP)

For centuries Paris has been and will remain the capital of international fashion, wants to believe Didier Grumbach, French industrialist and ex-president of the Haute Couture and Fashion Federation, which has largely contributed to the development of ready-to-wear in France.

"World fashion is in Paris and will remain in Paris, it was already the case in Marie-Antoinette's time and it is still true today", he said to AFP, evoking the last queen of the 'Ancien Régime, which revolutionized women's clothing in the 18th century before being guillotined during the Revolution.

The 83-year-old multi-faceted businessman who chaired the Fédération de la mode française between 1998 and 2014 released "Mémoires de mode", where he told of the emergence and development of ready-to-wear and the evolution of fashion weeks in Paris.

"Ready-to-wear began to exist in the 1950s and the ready-to-wear federation made announcements to encourage women to dress" ready-made "in 1954," he recalls.

Before that, "your grandmother went to a haberdashery, bought fabric and then met a seamstress".

- "nobody believed it" -

With the family business of luxury clothing, C. Mendès, he contributed to the evolution of luxury ready-to-wear for Saint Laurent, Givenchy or Valentino.

"The revolution was to go into a store and come out dressed differently, it was amazing and we did not believe it at all at the beginning. It changed the habits of consumers and the clothing industry."

"The couturiers did not know the ready-to-wear, did not know how to do it, there was a need for a long time of an intermediate industry which was able to transform the sketches of the couturiers into portable clothes".

In 1967, he inaugurated in New York the first American subsidiary of a French ready-to-wear company and the same year opened ready-to-wear factories in France in Chalonnes-sur-Loire and Angers.

And if today very few people dress to measure, he thinks that haute couture always has a bright future ahead of it.

"Haute couture and ready-to-wear have become complementary while for decades they were irreconcilable".

- International showcase -

"The main thing is that haute couture is a dream and that it interests an international clientele and that it reflects on the brand by enriching it," he says.

In 1968, Cristobal Balenciaga closed his fashion house. Today the Georgian artistic director of the house Balenciaga, Demna Gvasalia, has just announced that it wanted to reconnect with haute couture. "An intelligent decision", according to Didier Grumbach.

The fact that foreigners like the Italian Giorgio Armani are still joining the haute couture week which only exists in Paris is proof "that the system is working well".

When Didier Grumbach invited foreign stars to parade in Paris in the 1970s, the initiative was initially misunderstood.

"By bringing in people like Issey Miyake from Japan or Ossie Clark from London when they had nothing to do in Paris - they didn't produce or sell there - we started a movement that And when Yohji Yamamoto or Comme des Garcons joined Issey in Paris, it further boosted Parisian fashion, "he said.

As President of the Federation, he worked to ensure that there were no longer privileged niches for large historic houses at the expense of emerging brands, a principle still in force: new entrants to the official Fashion calendar week which started on Monday parade alongside Dior, Chanel or Louis Vuitton.

© 2020 AFP