单项选择题
Making a Loss is the Height of Fashion
Given that a good year in the haute couture business is one where you lose even more money than usual, the prevailing mood in Paris last week was of recession-busting buoyancy. The big-name designers were falling over themselves to boast of how many outfits they had sold at below cost price, and how this proved that the fashion business was healthier than ever. Jean-Paul Gaultier reported record sales, "but we don’t make any money out of it," the designer assured journalists backstage. "No matter how successful you are, you can’t make a profit from couture," explained Jean-Jacques Picart, a veteran fashion PR man, and co-founder of the now-bankrupt Lacroix house.
Almost 20 years have passed since the Alice in Wonderland economics of the couture business were first exposed. Outraged that he was losing money on evening dresses costing tens of thousands of pounds, the couturier Jean-Louis Scherrer — to howls of "trahison" from his colleagues - published a detailed summary of his costs. One outfit he described contained over half a mile of gold thread, 18,000 sequins, and had required hundreds of hours of hand-stitching in an atelier. A fair price would have been ￡50,000, but the couturier could only get ￡35,000 for it. Rather than riding high on the follies of the super-rich, he and his team could barely feed their hungry families.
The result was an outcry and the first of a series of government - and industry-sponsored inquiries into the surreal world of ultimate fashion. The trade continues to insist that - relatively speaking - couture offers you more than you pay for, but it’s not as simple as that. When such a temple of old wealth starts talking about value for money, it isn’t to convince anyone that dresses costing as much as houses are a bargain. Rather, it is to preserve the peculiar mystique, lucrative associations and threatened interests that couture represents.
Essentially, the arguments couldn’t be simpler. On one side are those who say that the business will die if it doesn’t change. On the other are those who say it will die if it does. What’s not in doubt is that haute couture - the term translates as "high sewing" - is a spectacular anachronism. Colossal in its costs, tiny in its clientele and questionable in its influence, it still remains one of the great themes of Parisian life. In his book, The Fashion Conspiracy, Nicholas Coleridge estimates that the entire couture industry rests on the whims of less than 30 immensely wealthy women, and although the number may have grown in recent years with the new prosperity of Asia, the number of couture customers worldwide is no more than 4,000.
To qualify as couture, a garment must be entirely hand-made by one of the 11 Paris couture houses registered to the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Each house must employ at least 20 people, and show a minimum of 75 new designs a year. So far, so stirringly traditional, but the Big Four operators - Chanel, Dior, Givenchy and Gaultier — increasingly use couture as a marketing device for their far more profitable ready-to-wear, fragrance and accessory lines.
A．Quite supportive.
B．Fairly friendly.
C．Rather indifferent.
D．Somewhat ironical.