But the first true haute couturier is widely considered to have been Charles Frederick Worth.

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It was a century later, however, during the reign of couturier Charles Frederick Worth, that the haute couture was established in 1868 and Paris's role as the world's wellspring of trends was formalized.

WSJ: A Rustling Theater of the Self | Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity | Metropolitan Museum of Art | By Laura Jacobs

Those stories were about '20s Chanel dresses, costumes from the Ballets Russes and an entire wardrobe created in the 1870s for a Roman princess by Charles Frederick Worth (the world's very first haute couture designer), bought for her by Lagerfeld.

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