What is the point of top-end fashion? An haute couture dress can cost more than $100,000. Not surprisingly, there are no more than 2,000 haute couture customers in the world. The commercial point is that haute couture is the fashion house's loss leader. It creates the image of the brand. Someone who would never pay $20,000 for a hand-made dress might pay $1,000 for an off-the-peg dress with the same designer label – or $50 for its perfumes.Fashion shows may be expensive, but the publicity they generate works out cheaper and more effective than spending $80,000 a page on advertisements in the glossy fashion magazines. One New York consultancy calculates that a 20-minute show, which could cost up to $500,000, generates as much publicity as $7m of advertising in American fashion magazines. Most people could never wear the clothes, but the idea is to create a buzz.The true capital of fashion is Paris. It is home to the most famous brands, and it has the biggest number of talented designers. France's fashion and luxury-goods industry represents some 2,000 firms, 200,000 jobs and 5% of total industrial production. Include the textile industry, with 60,000 employees and the share of industrial activity rises to 8%. With advertising, graphic design and media, it all adds up to real economic weight. And France exports much of this output.Can Paris continue to be the centre of the fashion inclustry? Perhaps New York, with its huge domestic market and new creative talent, will become fashion's centre in the future. But for now, the challenge for everyone is to sell: after all, fashion is a business.
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