Couture Close-Ups with Charles Kleibacker, 1978

fashion what is it all about is it some deep dark mystery that's all fluff and fixation is it yards and yards of beautiful fabric floating down from the heavens that was a magical pinch of a pen takes form is it all glamour no I don't think that's the definition of fashion not true fashion to me Couture world of fashion is serious is dedication is not fluffing fixation is not as the song goes a ride to the moon on gossamer wings that word oh cute or are those words oak couture they sound so high flown but if we really give them their translation from the French the word oat means high better superior Couture means seem sewing so if we translate oak Couture to me superior sewing I think we've arrived at the basis of fashion that superior sewing in combination with a tasteful imaginative dedicated approach to design is as I see it what true fashion is all about I think the set of us set in sleeve getting it high enough under the arm a deep neckline that is held in so that one puts the woman at her most comfortable and her most attractive this is again what couture fashion is all about Here I am on this marvelous campus of Iowa State University and I go back to my three years in Paris and I think how the combination of the educator in this world of fashion becomes more and more meaningful and as I see it on this superb campus with this great home economics department at Iowa State University a young person has everything at hand to come up with a marvelous design which I feel must be engineered yes indeed I think design is mathematics I think it is engineering I think it almost approaches a science and perhaps if we can think more of fashion in that way rather than the feds and gimmick we would arrive at how this is indeed a dedicated discipline marvelously imaginative and exciting world the world of fashion