Fashion houses create their own fabrics to highlight craftsmanship, inspire designs and promote sustainability

Sep 12 , 2017

The final look from Ralph & Russo’s autumn/winter 2017 haute couture collection.

Unique textiles give luxury fashion houses Schiaparelli, Ralph & Russo, Chanel, Dries Van Noten, Stella McCartney, Guo Pei and Ermenegildo Zegna an exclusive edge

Watching Céline Dion twirl in Schiaparelli’s Crystal² dress on the balcony of the couturier’s Place Vendôme atelier for a photo shoot is so breathtaking it makes you want to capture the moment, frame it and hang it alongside the Salvador Dali masterpieces in the maison’s workshop.

The regal beauty of the songstress is unequivocal, but the dress, made entirely with Swarovski crystals, is truly a work of art.

Schiaparelli ‘s Crystal² dress, shown at Paris Haute Couture Week in July, features 3D crystal embroidery.

The Crystal² dress, shown during Paris Haute Couture Week in July, features elaborate 3D crystal embroideries on fine crystal mesh, which is one of Swarovski’s latest innovations. With the multicoloured crystals, the iridescent dress reflects light from more than 4.7 million facets.

“There are only crystals on this dress, nothing else,” says Bertrand Guyon, Schiaparelli’s creative director. “The crystals specially made for us are so Schiaparelli – the purple tinted with lilac and the iridescent pink.”

Rather than using existing fabrics, Guyon and other fashion designers and couturiers are increasingly focusing on creating unique textiles to highlight craftsmanship, inspire designs and promote sustainability.

An artisan works on Chanel fabric, which is featured in the autumn/winter 2017 couture collection.

For haute couturiers, exclusive textiles are as crucial as designs. Some houses will go as far as acquiring heritage ateliers and fabric mills to ensure the uniqueness of their creations.

Chanel is one of the pioneers in the field. Not only does it have 10 prestigious artisanal ateliers under one roof – including Lesage and Montex, who are known for their embroidery work, Guillet, which specialises in creating delicate fabric flowers and plants, as well as Lognon, the pleater – it has also been celebrating the artisans with a Metiers d’Art show every year since 2002.