You're reading: New York Times: At Versace and Dior, designing a new couture context

PARIS - The fact that the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where great financial and political minds get together in Davos, Switzerland, to pontificate on the pressing problems of the day, traditionally falls at the same time, or close to, the haute couture shows in Paris, where the 1 percent (or, to be fair, the .001 percent) get together to shop for made-to-order garments, has always seemed like a particularly pointed cosmic joke, told at fashion's expense.

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