Editor’s Note: CNN Style is one of the official media partners of Paris Fashion Week. See all coverage here
Amid a record-breaking heatwave in the City of Lights — with temperatures so high the Eiffel Tower summit was closed to tourists last week — fashion designers prepare their pièce de résistance for Paris Haute Couture Week, which runs from 7-10 July.
The clothes on show at Haute Couture are hand-sewn, hand-embellished and expertly crafted by a fleet of artisanal seamstresses, tailors, pattern cutters and other garment workers in ateliers. What they produce, which often clocks up hundreds of hours of labor, will be sold to the world’s most affluent customers — celebrities, royalty or wealthy aristocrats and individuals.
In an email to CNN, Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (French fashion’s governing body), emphasized the week’s “unparalleled creativity, diversity and savoir-faire”, where “artisanal skills and atelier hold a central place.”
This season, the compact schedule is bursting with moments to watch out for. Schiaparelli, the hallowed couture house helmed by US designer Daniel Roseberry, will kickstart the week with a new collection that will likely become ubiquitous on the celebrity red carpet circuit (Lauren Bezos Sanchez chose to wear one of his designs for her controversial nuptials in Venice last month).
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