I recently met Camilo Barcia García-Villamil, the Consul General of Spain in San Francisco, for a dinner honoring Neiman Marcus’s Joan Kaner. The man from the land of Balenciaga waved off any claims or disclaimers regarding the death of couture. He told me that in his native city of Madrid, women of style call upon one of a dozen couturiers—each couturier having no more than thirty clients—and that the price per garment is more reasonable than Haute Couture (the dwindling French houses)—and the results are “spectacular”.

I am one of those persons who adore Haute Couture but would have to make major lifestyle changes to buy it regularly. That old California sage Gertrude Stein once said that for the female aesthete, the choice is between paintings and dresses. I have been there! It is not just one of Gertrude’s pithy one liners. There have been seasons when I didn’t buy dresses in Paris because I was saving for a painting I wanted very much to own. Art and fashion are my two passions. And this is why the dwindling Haute Couture schedule is breaking my heart. Only during this week can one see the perfect interaction of art and fashion. Some worn out old New York fashion person snipped that art was not fashion, that you don’t hang clothes up on your wall. Guess what, worn out fashion person---I know plenty of people who do, including yours truly. But if Haute Couture really does die, remember the marvelous “petite mains”, the former Haute Couture seamstress who, armed with a lifetime of intimate knowledge and intuition of what is chic and elegant, opens her own business. We must be positive in these difficult times. For those of us who love fashion, there will always be a way to find the clothes that comfort us and give us joy.