While my friends in college adorned their walls with posters of Duran Duran, Tom Cruise and various members of The Brat Pack, I spent my time meticulously cutting out couture gowns from Vogue magazine.
With endless possibilities in shape, texture and transparency, the experimentation of 3D printing techniques and materials has a worthy place on the cutting edge of couture.
And in Mr. Simons the couture house has found someone to take a measure of the current situation: a need to give the fabulous skills of the ateliers a workout, the clients' desire to have clothes as wearable as they are beautiful — in other words, cutting back and tidying up couture's wilder growth.
More than 140 cutting-edge couture and ready-to-wear garments spanning Gaultier's entire career will go on show.
"New York offers a highly skilled labor force and is conducive to the cutting-edge couture products that we produce, resulting in the shipping of over half a million brushes a month," said Victoria Towey, the director of marketing.
She played dressing up dolls with another neighbour, Jasper Conran, and remembers cutting up one of her mother's couture dresses to make a witch's costume for Halloween - her mother didn't mind.
Haute couture is (almost literally) at the cutting edge of modern culture.
Backstage after their spring show, the designers Viktor & Rolf explained that because of the credit crunch, they had decided to "crunch their couture" -- literally, burrowing tunnels and cutting away slices in their extravagant tulle dresses.
A couture layout in May flirted with the cutting edge, showing jeweled and spangled dresses photographed against a colorful backdrop inspired by Japanese animé.
Everything must be lavish, when actually the most drop-dead couture is often perfectly simple by virtue of the cutting.
