a snub (of sorts) to fancy

“Of course the executives, like the bankers, mistook the dream. Haute couture is really about taste and aesthetic vision. It’s the kind of vision that Karl Lagerfeld showed the other night at Chanel, with clothes — dark tweed suits with long gold-lined clerical panels at the back, or dresses with spiraling armorlike flashes of embroidery — that resist being quantified as ‘new’ or ‘modern.’ In that sense, couture is a lot like a novel or a piece of music. It offers a very specific experience.”

full new york times article here