Dior's 30-minute encore

Chinese movie star Zhang Ziyi and Dior's chief executive Sidney Toledano. Photo provided to China Daily

The Dior Spring-Summer 2013 Haute Couture collection is essentially a replica of work first unveiled during Paris' Couture Fashion Week in January.

Vertical black stripes on a milky silk maxi-skirt demonstrates understated elegance, peach blossom pattern on turn-down collars add a touch of spring, and dresses in bright colors evoke thoughts of summer days. Clients are invited to make appointments for purchases after the show.

Simons, the successor to the iconic John Galliano, has recreated a bucolic Garden of Eden.

The collection explores the rich diversity of the seasons and features carefully constructed full flowers and exquisite multi-layered embroideries that bloom on dresses and silhouette trousers.

"I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture, or for a single moment on the red carpet," says Simons, in an interview in the November issue of Australian Vogue.

"I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and a relevance there, because that's what Mr Christian Dior wanted. In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theater."

It's an attitude toward design that may help the fashion house that is eyeing the "big market of tomorrow", China, where red-carpet theatrics are rare.

Dior's chief executive Sidney Toledano told Reuters at the show that sales of the company's business in the United States have been bouncing back, especially in couture. According to Toledano, Chinese-Americans, Chinese-Australians and tourists from China are the main driving force.

Another French couture house, Chanel, is also making moves to cater to Chinese market.

In 2009, Karl Lagerfeld, designer and creative director for the fashion house, brought Chanel's first "demi-couture" pre-fall collection to Shanghai and has been traveling to the country twice a year to meet private clients, according to the Business of Fashion website.

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