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From Alan LeBlanc, speaking about the importance of a perfectly draped armseye:  "One of the fundamentals of Haute Couture draping is the “Pli de Souplesse”. Learning it wasn’t like learning to make collars & lapels, which is something that I naturally, immediately understood. It only concerns garments with sleeves, especially the extremely fitted kind. In all of my Paris couture experiences, the sleeve was treated with utmost importance. Paris couture is not only an arena of science, geometry, and harmony, but of tradition and even superstition. Perhaps we owe the traditional importance of the sleeve to the House of the Callot Soeurs which was the first house to make toiles (the design draped in cotton muslin). In the new book-catalog of the current Paris exhibition of Vionnet, Puriste de la Mode in the Museum of Decorative Arts, Vionnet, who was trained by one of the Callot sisters, Madame Gerber, is quoted explaining the importance of the sleeve to Madame Gerber, who believed that the sleeve alone could create a clothing renaissance equal to the actual Italian Renaissance of the 16th Century!"

This article is a rare lesson in the Pli de Souplesse, a sleeve/armseye secret of Haute Couture draping. Reprinted from the 2009 Cutting Cloth Annual. In English, 9 pages with illustrations by Alan LeBlanc.

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