The luxury designer brand Herve Leger renowned, for their iconic body contouring dresses worn by numerous A-listers, and now infamous for the uninhibited and offensive words of Managing Director Patrick Couderc. 
The signature figure hugging dress with a bandage style contouring design has been worn by celebrities from Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Michelle Rodriguez, Victoria Beckham and many more, which many females admire. The designer’s signature dress snowballed, and turned into a fashion frenzy with many high street shops mimicking the flattering design so that women who may not be able to spare around £1,300 for a dress, will be able to get designer style at a fraction of the price, and feel fantastic on a night out.
As always young females aspire to look like famous people and celebrity icons, and we undoubtedly hark after their wardrobe and admire their style, and consequently try to emulate it ourselves. Nothing wrong in that, right? Wrong!
According to Mr Couderc, there is. Patrick Couderc has recently admitted that the signature style dress is to fit a certain female, attacking a large population of women in its wake. Who knew there was a set quota to wear one item? 
The criteria to wear the dress (according to Patrick Couderc) is the following:
- A slim petite frame, no lumps and bumps.
- No flat chests. As he states that ‘voluptuous women’ and women with ‘very prominent hips and a very flat chest’ must not wear the item.
- Not suitable for ‘committed lesbians’. Couderc is of the very stereotypical and highly offensive homosexual belief that lesbians prefer to be ‘butch and leisurely’. (I think I heard your jaw hit the floor).
- No older women, as he states that older women’s ‘cleavage is about two inches too low because you are 55 and it’s time that you should not display everything like you’re 23.’
- No visible underwear, and you are not too wear underwear too small, so no panty lines.
- You must be of a certain class. Supposedly Couderc will not give dresses to anyone if they are not of a sufficient class.
Couderc clearly has no filter (or heart)!
I don’t know about you, but that checklist sounds like something Regina George would write in ‘The Burn Book’ in Mean Girls.
Despite Patrick Couderc having committed nearly every sort of ‘-ism’ offence, I am surprised there has not been a question of his position as the boss of the designer brand.
It is understandable that during the design process of new garments the designer will undoubtedly have a type of muse in mind, such as a businesswoman or a young teen – a target market. However, Couderc has taken this target audience to the extreme, and has been overly detailed of his musein terms of exact weight, body frame, social status, and age, thus expelling most types of women from wearing the item.
With Couderc’s attack in mind, there is no doubt why there has been a surge in females dieting, and a heightened awareness of one’s body image.
What I do question though is why has there not been an uproar to this yet? Couderc has tainted and brought down the reputation of the luxury brand through the representative’s offensive remarks, but what will be done? Of course, people will buy into the luxury brand but what does this say about other luxury brands? Do they too envisage their new garments on a stick thin, busty, petite, aristocratic woman, rather than a 50 year old mum of three with a curvaceous body who is taller than your average female? What gives Couderc the right to not allow certain women the dress? Surely, if you can afford the item, it is yours, and more importantly, the main shopping principle is that if the item makes you feel good then buy it. Right?
What I also question is Couderc’s unrelenting verbal diarrhoea, his insulting and degrading remarks about women, and his misogynistic and homophobic view about women. If he believes that only one type of woman (lesbians excluded, in his opinion) should wear Herve Leger’s designs, does he too believe that the entire population of women should follow and morph into the designer directors archetype of a woman? That any woman that may want a day wearing granny pants, which the seam may slightly show through even a pair of jeans, be looked at in disgust? No. Couderc’s extremely idealised view of women that no woman is allowed to have a minor flaw- not a stray hair, nor a slight panty line on show, let alone (god help you) a little bump or ‘food baby’ (which is clearly not present in the advertisement below, which appears like the model is breathing in to emphasise her slender frame), is unrealistic and a derrogative perception of women. But what does this say about the perception of women, still?
I fear that those who idolise designer brands will be blinkered into this same belief about women, and even worse, I fear that Couderc and his extremely open views will permit other men to so openly comment about women and women’s shapes.
I personally find Couderc’s comment extremely objectifying and degrading about women, critically observing our body shape and status; I was, and still am, mortified by the comments Patrick Couderc made.
What are your thoughts?
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