A fashion house or maison couture is a parent company which hires numerous fashion designers to produce a variety of lines. Many houses produce both couture and ready-to-wear lines of clothing, along with shoes, handbags, jewelry, and other accessories.
What exactly is a fashion house?
Typically, a house has a flagship namesake brand, but it may also control several other brands which are targeted at different regions of the market. Goods from the main line tend to carry a premium cost, especially in the case of garments which are custom-designed for specific clients.
France, and specifically Paris, is generally viewed as the home of international fashion, and France is also the nation which gave birth to the maison couture. Historically, dressmakers worked on their own, and sometimes with assistants who performed basic sewing tasks.
A French draper was the first to assemble a fashion house, in which multiple designers worked under his supervision to develop a line of clothing. He called his establishment a maison couture, and people started using the terms “house” or “couturier” to refer to establishments organized in a similar fashion.
Some well-known examples of couturiers include Chanel, Givenchy, Yves St. Laurent, Kenneth Cole, Alexandar McQueen, Prada, Versace, and Armani, among many others. Many of these firms are named for their founders, and several are dynastic businesses, with multiple generations of the family working in various divisions within the house.
Fashion houses take their brands very seriously, and they go to great lengths to protect and promote them. Each house wants to come up with innovative fashion which helps it to stand out from the pack, and it also wants to develop a trademark “look” for each season which is instantly recognizable.
When designers at a house get together to develop looks for the new season, they talk about the history of the brand, the direction they want to take the brand in, and the themes they want to play with in the coming season. Each designer produces a range of items, and the head of the house decides which items will be produced and marketed to the public.
Employment in the fashion industry can be brutal, and working for a major fashion house is no exception. Designers usually attend art school and do years of scut work before they are even permitted to submit designs for consideration to their supervisors, and these supervisors have years of experience in the fashion industry.
Fashion is definitely a lifetime career, as it can take a decade or more before one’s designs are considered worthy of the runways.
How do fashion houses make money?
The reality is that all the large fashion houses make all of their profit from accessories such as sunglasses, perfume and handbags. Clothing and accessories have reversed their relationship roles: apparel is something you “have” to have, but it’s not most brand’s bread and butter anymore.
Of course, clothing remains important. Clothing is what sets a brand apart from its competitors and lets them make a definitive statement about who they are in the market. But due to high development costs, it’s very difficult to make money from clothing unless you’re a luxury brand like Burberry — and even then, their margins are much larger on their scarves than their famous trenches. After all, accessories are less expensive to develop and manufacture — and their lower price points mean more accessibility to consumers, resulting in more volume of sales.
So if large fashion houses can’t make much money off of apparel, smaller brands shouldn’t try to build their business model around it. Especially in light of the massive opportunity presented by accessories: so few brands are servicing their audience’s growing desire for on-trend, cool accessories, and there’s a lot of market share waiting for brands who truly accessorize first. In reality, every brand should be thinking of accessories as:
- Low-price gateways into your brand. A customer may have just met your brand — you don’t want them to leave because of the higher price points of your apparel. A well-accessorized store or website gives them accessible price points that allow a new customer to start a relationship with your brand and eventually upgrade to higher-priced items
- Brand statement pieces. For instance, if your brand is focused around empowerment, then yoga mats, crystals, and natural oil fragrances can naturally reinforce your message in ways that are difficult for you to do with apparel
- Augmentations to apparel offerings. Nobody should walk out of your store or leave your website without a branded belt, bag or at least a pin — if they’ve bought in to a high-priced piece of clothing, they already love your brand. Not letting them express it is leaving money on the table.
The bottom line is this: with a strong accessories strategy, your fashion brand will drive more top line revenue and be more profitable.
10 Most valuable fashion brands
| RANK | BRAND | COUNTRY | 2020 (BILLION USD) | 2019 (BILLION USD) | CATEGORY |
| 1 | NIKE | US | 34.8 | 32.4 | Fashion |
| 2 | GUCCI | Italy | 17.6 | 14.6 | Fashion |
| 3 | Adidas | Germany | 16.4 | 16.6 | Fashion |
| 4 | Louis Vuitton | France | 16.4 | 13.5 | Fashion |
| 5 | Cartier | France | 15.0 | 13.6 | Jewellery/F. |
| 6 | ZARA | Spain | 14.5 | 18.4 | Fashion |
| 7 | H&M | Sweden | 13.8 | 15.8 | Fashion |
| 8 | Chanel | France | 13.7 | 12.8 | Fashion |
| 9 | UNIQLO | Japan | 12.8 | 11.9 | Fashion |
| 10 | Hermès | France | 11.9 | 10.9 | Fashion |
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