Architecture After Couture Reaction

In "Architecture After Couture," Varnelis examines and analyzes the modern fashions of today with the art of buildings. The integration of fashion and architecture has evolved over time and couture fashion itself is constructed in a way similar to buildings. When I think of the word 'couture' many images come into my head, and most of them are of large dramaticly constructed dresses of abstract shapes and built with such depth and length of material that they resemble buildings. Couture gowns are often known to be over the top with glamour and structure, and even couture makeup is complex and far from ordinary. Haute couture is literally translated from french as "high sewing" and is defined in Webster's dictionary as "the houses or designers that create exclusive and often trend-setting fashions for women." Although haute couture fashion is not ready-to-wear for the modern woman, it sets the stakes high and determines the background trends that ready-to-wear designers use in their more wearable clothes, such as interpretation of certain shapes such as bubble hem or certain colors or fabric.

Like architecture, couture fashion evolves over the years and changes to the modernity of today's culture. According to Varnelis, changes in architecture must occur in order to provide new fashion trends in haute couture. He writes that architecture students often look to fashion magazines such as Flaunt for inspiration. Varnelis argues that fashion and architecture have similiar purposes in society; to build and display class differences in society.

When Varnelis wrote that after the 1960s, "difference is no longer the property of the elite," he meant that after the Mod culture ended, everyone broke free from the scene where everyone looked the same trend and broke free into different subcultures. With the evolving fashion, everyone interpreted it differently and people of every social class was able to embrace the trends. After many centuries where looking fashionable and owning trendy of-the-moment clothes defined the class you were in, and only the high class elitists could wear them, thus defining the rule of fashion being that only the elite could wear them. During this time, haute couture designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Dior reproduced 'street' looks populare at the time and mad them high-fashion, and ever since then, fashion was 'doomed,' according to Varnelis. This is just an early example of designers declaring new fashion trends and being credited with starting new trends when in actuality the trends were already apparent in society but in the streets worn by the non-elitists such as the hippies in the '60s. A more modern example of this is the infamous first line by Marc Jacobs who introduced the grunge look of the '90s into the fashion world, making flannel shirts and doc martens trendy when they were already being worn by all teenagers who were apart of the original grunge movement in rock'n'roll. A more recent example is the terrorist scarves worn by many in America and made popular in European countries such as Denmark and Sweden when they are traditional arabic scarves that represent, to many, war and terrorism. These scarves were available by mainstream trendy store Urban Outfitters but was taken out of the catalog after being labeled the "terrorist scarf." Many reproductions of this scarf with hearts on them, ironicly, are available at stores like H&M.

Fashion is interpreted and many reproduced all over and high-fashion trends are sold at cheaper stores such as Target, as mentioned in "Architecture After Couture" and many people, including myself, can agree it is nice to be able to buy replicas of designer outfits for cheap because all of us cannot afford the actual items but identify with the fashionable culture today and everyone is desperate to be a part of the high fashion of the modern couture elitists in society.

According to Varnelis, the change that must occur in architecture to evolve fashion is