The economic crisis doesn’t really scare the people who still practice haute couture, that small, vanishing world of embroiderers, dyers and feathermakers who serve the imagination of the few remaining couturiers. Asked if the economy was having an effect on the spring couture season, Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel said, “Only on the conversation.”

A decade ago, Pierre Bergé, the former chairman of Yves Saint Laurent, summed up the contemporary problem of couture when he called it “the opposite of a business.” Even though people recognize the marketing value of an extravagant couture show, they find it harder and harder to grasp its real value, which is to make exquisite, one-of-a-kind clothes using all the various needle crafts.

A decade from now, if there are more than two or three houses still producing twice-yearly haute couture collections, it will be surprising.

Mr. Lagerfeld is a complete antique in that he doesn’t use a word processor — and all the clothes were white or black and white. What made the show a rare pleasure was Mr. Lagerfeld’s supreme ability to concentrate on a single idea and find endless ways to express it.

He was like a fly that landed on a leaf and surveyed all. But the leaf told him everything.

From the archive:

The sheer amount of sewing done by gentlewomen in those days sometimes takes us moderns aback, but it would probably generally be a mistake to view it either as merely constant joyless toiling, or as young ladies turning out highly embroidered ornamental knicknacks to show off their elegant but meaningless accomplishments.

Look your best.

Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like.

A final thought:

Having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, he asked, what did the turtle rest on?

Another turtle.

And that turtle?

"Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."