Haute couture refers to the custom-made collections that serve just a few thousand rich women worldwide. It is an extremely costly, labor-intensive craft of custom fitting the design on the customer. The made-to-order garment is then hand-sewn in an atelier by experienced seamstresses, sometimes requiring hundreds of hours of work.
In the 1950s, exclusive and pricey haute couture were on their way to becoming practically extinct. Chanel saw that selling the Chanel label itself on mass-produced products (and especially on her perfume) would be the key to the fashion house's financial success.
Haute couture then became an expensive, but effective, way of advertising the perfume, which generated huge income from women eager for a bit of the Chanel style that it represented.
