What is the ultimate dream of fashion? It must be couture. Haute Couture in French is called Haute Couture - as a synonym for luxury, it is beautiful and delicate, but behind the condensation of countless designers and artisans. So how much time and work does it take to make a dress truly haute couture? It has these stories behind it.

You know what? There are no more than 20 brands that can truly be called Haute Couture.

At present, the brands participating in Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week are divided into three categories, according to the list of spring/summer 2017, we are familiar with the official members are Chanel, Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Overseas members include Elie Saab, Giorgio Armani Prive, Valentino, etc., and special invited members include Vetements, Guo Pei, etc.

In addition to full members, foreign members whose brand is not originated in France can also be called Haute Couture, but invited members are not fully worthy of this title. Due to the rapid decline of Haute Couture in the 1990s, it was specially opened as a special invited member in order to maintain the development of Haute Couture. In 1997, Jean Paul Gaultier became the first guest member.

If the invited member is sponsored by the full member to attend the Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week and participates in the presentation for 2 consecutive years, he/she will be eligible to apply for full membership.

A piece of haute couture requires the efforts of countless designers and craftsmen, which is the production process of the last Look.

Of course, these brands can not be casually considered Haute Couture, they must pass the strict review of the Paris Haute Couture union, which is the following criteria:

1. According to the requirements of individual customers, design and manufacture and have at least one fitting debugging.

2. Have a workshop (studio) in Paris with at least 15 full-time staff.

3. There must be 20 full-time full-time technicians in a workshop (studio)

4. Hold a public presentation in January and July each year, showing at least 50 original outfits, including day wear and evening wear.

When making the Chanel Fall/Winter 2016 Haute Couture collection, Chanel's handmade workshop is filled with countless luxury fabrics to choose from.

Haute Couture has a long history. Originally, Haute Couture originated from Queen Mary, the wife of King Louis XVI of France.

The 2006 Sofia Coppola-directed film "Last Century" stars Kristen Dunst as Marie Antoinette, who leads a lavish lifestyle.

She is very keen on dressing up, she has her own personal tailor Rose Bertin, and Rose Bertin tailored clothes for Queen Mary, which is considered to be the earliest prototype of Haute Couture.

About a century later, the British designer Charles Frederick Worth really established the modern meaning of couture. He opened his own fashion House, named House of Worth, for customers to customize unique fashion, so he is also known as the "father of haute couture". In addition, Charles James is also a memorable name, this master born in England, spent his best years in New York, his design is full of architectural structures, Along with Christian Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga, he was one of the most visionary and innovative designers of his time. In 2014, the theme of the MET Gala was "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" -- a tribute to Charles James.

Dior and I, a documentary by Frederic Tcheng, tells the story of Raf Simons, who came to Dior's artisanal workshop in Paris and spent the next eight weeks creating his first haute couture collection for Dior.

In many cases, a Haute Couture dress takes between 100 and 400 hours. In the case of Elie Saab, for the 15th Look of the Spring/Summer 2014 Haute Couture collection, the petaled and beaded dress took four tailors and five embroiderers 150 hours to create.

In fact, Elie Saab haute couture workshop only has 80 tailors, tailors are only responsible for the plate stitching work, and three-dimensional petals, bead embroidery, tulle lace and other exquisite details of the decoration have a special division of labor.

Chanel is even more lavish, the 54th Look of the spring/Summer 2014 Haute Couture collection, decorated with a total of 308,000 hand-inset sequins - the whole dress took a total of 283 hours to complete.

The feathers on the costume are also not to be underestimated, they actually consist of a mixture of three different types of feathers, so it can take 117 hours just to select and arrange them.

Sometimes, even a pair of shoes on the show can take up to 30 hours to complete, while the ordinary production line takes only a few hours to make a pair of sneakers.

The haute couture craftsmanship of the Fall/Winter 2016 collection also seems to take more and more thought than in previous years. For Fendi's Fall/Winter 2016 Haute Couture collection, Bella Hadid's cape is made from 24 different colors of mink fur and leather. The village scene in the lower half of the cloak used 10 techniques, including carving, 3D relief and more, and cost nearly 5,000 mink hairs, making the cloak about 1,000 hours in total.

Also from the Autumn/Winter 16 Haute Couture collection, this Givenchy dress used 34,600 pure white artificial amber and 7,500 Swarovski crystals, all handmade in a total of 850 hours.

Therefore, superb skills and elaborate production in exchange for Haute Couture high value. In the case of Dior, the price of a Haute Couture piece is about 50,000 to 200,000 dollars, and there are millions of dollars and more. However, more than $1 million of haute couture is basically made according to the special requirements of the customer.

These tens of thousands of dollars are usually from the royal family or aristocrats in countries that still have a court system, but from the end of the 20th century, there has been a new group of consumers, such as the American elite, the Middle East oil tycoon and so on. Take Nan Kempner, a New York socialite who is married to a banker. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosted an exhibition of her clothing called Nan Kempner: American Chic, which featured thousands of everyday wear and about 3,000 haute couture pieces from Nan's wardrobe.

The consumer population of Haute Couture is not large, only 3,000-5,000 people can afford expensive Haute Couture. However, at present, many luxury brands no longer care about whether Haute Couture can bring profits to the brand, such as Chanel and Dior - they prefer to use Haute Couture to continue to maintain the brand's high-end and luxurious image.

Because of the extremely high cost of Haute Couture, many brands began to flee from Haute Couture. In the early years, Paris once had nearly 1,000 Haute Couture brands. Recently, Versace announced its withdrawal from the upcoming Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week to focus on the brand's VIP customers in the form of a private cocktail party release.

Other brands, however, have turned to see and buy to boost their performance, and some have even tried to break out of their decline by bringing couture closer to ready-to-wear.

This dress from Valentino's spring/Summer 2017 ready-to-wear runway, with 2,000 tiny beads sewn by hand on multiple layers, took 2,000 hours to complete, even though nearly 20 people worked to make it.

The 2017 spring/summer ready-to-wear collection also has a surprise, each bead on the skirt each pattern part is manually sewn, 10 craftsmen spent more than 170 hours to complete, completely comparable to Dior Haute Couture manual skills, but this is only a ready-to-wear collection.

When Yves Saint Laurent retired from Haute couture in 2002, he left behind the phrase "Haute couture is dead", but will haute couture really disappear?

After all, it carries the ultimate dream of fashion, and I believe that these clothes, which have spent infinite effort, will continue to develop and be reborn in people's respect.