What fashion's front row reveals about the pricey links between labels and the A-list

There was barely room to exhale at Caviar Kaspia, a restaurant in Paris where baked potatoes cost 1000 euros and are filled with 80 grams of Beluga caviar last Monday night. It was the first day of Paris Couture week and chairs magically kept appearing for last-minute guests who squeezed around densely occupied tables laden with crystal glasses and china for a post-show dinner.

A couple of boulevards away, on the Avenue de l’Opera, the ravages on Europe’s economy were all too obvious: empty shops and sleeping bags in doorways. But inside this plushly upholstered cocoon, as one caustic diner observed, “what financial crisis?”

Couture week used to be an intimate affair - small salon presentations before fashion weeks, that mostly took place in front of around 100 or so women. These women - aristocrats, South American dictators’ wives (who gained an entire education on etiquette, interior decoration and style from the designers), often a celebrity or two - paid handsomely for the clothes they ordered, and they were the story.

Today, as the Renoir-esque, jewel-bedecked, taffeta swathed crowd at Caviar Kaspia demonstrates, it is a far grander affair - and an insight into the glitzy, outrageously extravagant world of film directors, influencers and oligarchs.

Among the celebrities, glossy magazine editor contingent and social media stars filming every blob of caviar for their Instagrams and TikToks were a smattering of actual clients (the ones who pay for their clothes.)

But most of those present weren’t what the fashion houses would call clients. The French dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker, who inspired last week’s languidly elegant Dior show, paid for her 1950s Dior as a badge of pride. Today’s phalanxes of A-listers don’t pay, also as a badge of pride.

Instead, they are paid. And in the past year, “since the pandemic, weirdly”, one fashion house insider told me, “their fees have become obscene, both to turn up, and to be dressed. Couture shows pay more than the ready to wear. “A celebrity with a good agent can get between £50-100,000 to sit on the front row. Plus they’re flown in and put up at the Ritz or The Crillon.”

There’ll be more money if said A-lister posts about it on social media, which has made couture, once a secretive, elite world (although brief, highly choreographed snippets, were released on Pathe News, with voiceovers from men) instantly viewable to everyone in real time.

Were Baz Luhrmann and his costume designer wife Catherine Martin doing the rounds of the front rows for inspiration, or to garner funding for their next film venture?

Julianne Moore once told me that some of the highly acclaimed indie films she’s starred in have such tiny budgets that collaborating with fashion brands is a way to afford doing them. At the Oscars, the current asking rate is $200,000-$300,000 for women to wear a gown on the red carpet, $70,000-$100,000 for men. No wonder some actresses wear two outfits by different brands on the night.

Did the Grammy winning rapper Doja Cat, who spent four hours with supremo make up artist Pat McGrath having her body painted red and splattered with rhinestones, water her bank account by attending the Schiaparelli show along with Kylie Jenner, model, entrepreneur and part of the Kardashian clan, who sat front row in her giant lion’s head adorned dress?

Unlikely. While the likes of Dior (whose front row celebs included Elizabeth Debicki, Kirsten Dunst, Rosamund Pike and Bianca Jagger); Valentino  (Anne Hathaway); Chanel (Marianne Cotillard, Tilda Swinton) and Armani (Michelle Yeoh), all make millions of euros from couture clothes, Schiaparelli is a minnow with small budgets.

To cut through, Schiaparelli’s current designer, Daniel Roseberry, has developed a talent for guerrilla tactics. Last week, they paid off handsomely. His stuffed (fake) animals provoked outrage (Carrie Johnson), admiration (Peta) and screams of disgust (certain celebrities who said they wouldn’t be wearing Schiaparelli). Joyous publicity opportunities all round.

So who is buying the clothes? Because make no mistake, money is changing hands - for both clothes and jewellery, which is shown separately in intimate presentations slotted between the catwalk shows. Those handing it over hail from all over the place, although what with their multiple homes, impounded jets and yachts that have been transferred to other names, addresses can be a bit vague.

The Chinese still aren’t travelling. The Russians reserve the right to self identify as anything but. But while clients may not appear in person (news of the world’s travails having permeated the walls even of their citadels, making $300,00 hand sewn lace hot-pants and matching capes a not terribly good look), they send their stylists to select for them. Naturally there’s a hierarchy of stylists as there is a hierarchy of everything at couture, including potatoes and caviar.

At Dior’s high jewellery show, more than half the jewels in some of the cases had been reserved by the second day - for prices that run into the millions. Stones are bigger. De Beers had ten carat diamonds. Cindy Chao, a Taiwanese jewellery designer dreamed up a pair of 11cm pea pod drop earrings (the length of an evening bag) capped with two enormous cabochon emeralds and instantly sold one of them - to a man who, rather than wear it, will display it on his desk. A sense of scarcity is crucial. At Cartier they’re not only using unbelievable stones but dinosaur bones - smothered in diamonds sculpted into a panther’s head.

You couldn’t make it up. Then again, during last week’s couture week, you didn’t have to.