Earlier this year, Versace chief executive, Gian Giacomo Ferraris, told Women's Wear Daily that the company's couture workshop, which today employs about 30 seamstresses, had escaped restructuring cuts made in 2009 because Ms Versace "protected and maintained it".
Mr. Cohen of Bonpoint said his company recently opened Bonton, a huge new loftlike store in Bonpoint's old couture workshop in Paris offering children's clothes and accessories under one roof.
In Frédéric Tcheng's 2015 documentary Dior and I, the close working relationship between Mulier and Simons is a central part of the narrative; Mulier is constantly on-hand for Simons to discuss ideas with and liaises with les petitites-mains (the seamstresses who work in the couture workshops) to communicate Simons' wishes in his absence.
Ralph Rucci's skills are so immaculate that his work, all done in his own studio workshop, reaches couture level.
In the picture's striking opening, an army of women march into the multi-level home and workshop of the British couture designer Reynolds Woodcock Daniell Day Lewis), ascending the stairway and walking single-file to the sewing tables and machines.
As a Senegalese tailor, founder of a workshop offering sewing courses ("Baobab Couture") told us, "we are a permanent coordination assembly".
Yet when Catherine Delondre, the head of the atelier, saw the garments emerging from the workshop, "we thought, this is real couture".
Saturday afternoons there will be workshops for children (kite making, superhero costume construction) and adults (sewing classes with the team from Sweat Shop, the charming cafe couture in the 10th Arrondissement).
He also hopes to set up a workshop in Luang Prabang that will embroider for haute couture houses.
No fashion house can qualify as haute couture, for example, unless it employs at least 20 people in its workshop and presents a minimum of 50 designs at the twice-yearly Paris collections (the spring/summer shows take place in January; the autumn/winter ones in July).What is the point of top-end fashion?
"There is a great deal of attention paid to runway couture and haute joaillerie, but I wanted to highlight the fact that there are many artisans in my workshops who are also able to make pieces that aren't mass produced, and of the most exquisite quality," he said.
