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idea exploded in Paris. Shops carrying the designs of unknown names such as Sonia Rykiel and Dorothèe Bis not only sold their ready-made styles to tourists but developed a following in department stores all over the world. They substituted their own brand of chic for the genteel fashions of the couture: miniskirts, T shirts, knitted shift dresses, trousers.

The couture countered by proferring its own ready-to-wear collections which, in the beginning, looked old and dowdy alongside the lively, iconoclastic styles of the ready-to-wear specialists. Yves Saint Laurent with his pea jackets, trench coats and pants suits was the first couturier to make his mark in both worlds of fashion. Other designers, like Emmanuel Ungaro, Hubert de Givenchy and the House of Dior, picked up the knack of making simplified ready-to-wear styles.

As they prospered, the ready-to-wear producers, representatives of fashion's counter culture, began to grow more serious.

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At first, they could succeed merely by startling: raising or lowering hemlines at an impossible pace, using outrageous colors, eliminating structure from clothes so they became formless. As prices for them skyrocketed, they could no longer succeed by attacking conventional ideas of dress: they had to provide clothes that would last for more than a minute and that would fit the changing needs of women everywhere. So their aims and that of the couture itself began to converge.

In their spring and summer collections, the couture designers made their best stand in years. Saint Laurent himself led the way with a good selection of suits, coats and even dresses that would be as useful to the executive woman in New York as the titled aristocrat in Paris.

Dior absorbed some of the breezy attitude of ready-to-wear clothes in a collection that was strong on pants suits and dresses anchored by drawstrings placed anywhere from waist to hemline.

Givenchy did as well with his chemise dresses as with tailored suits, and Ricci updated what is usually a matronly line with a series of culotte dresses.

Evening clothes were as spectacular as ever and here the couture cannot be approached by any other segment of the fashion business. No one else can afford the spectacular embroideries, the king's ransom brocades, the lavish applications of gold. They are, most of them, destined for balls at palaces, but even if you have no need for them in your personal life, they are quite exquisite to look upon as the highest expression of the art of dressmaking.

The couture, which seemed ready to wither away a few years back, showed a new surge of vitality. This can be attributed to the success of its perfumes, the surge of customers from the oil producing countries and its ready-to-wear operations, all of which provide an infusion of capital to keep it alive.

But most important is probably our change in attitudes. Now that the social revolution of the 1960's has passed into history, women of the world are interested in clothes with a certain amount of endurance, with a serious mien and an ability to flatter the woman who is wearing them. All this the couture provides in abundance.

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