"Haute couture" -- high fashion -- has long been good for a laugh. One of the best therapies for gloom in Tokyo is to stroll along the southeastern end of Omotesando, in Aoyama, where the fashion boutiques cluster. The prison-block architecture (rain-streaked cement tastefully accessorized with rust) is not too cheering, but the minimalist displays in the windows work every time. The very idea that someone would, with a straight face, put a price-tag equal to two weeks of ordinary folks' salary on a transparent mini-dress with a crooked hem and ripped-off sleeves is one of the better jokes out there.

But is it? Although they have traditionally ignored the gibes of "hoi polloi," the hoity-toity couturiers are reportedly fighting back this year. Prompting their ire was the critics' response to the spring fashion shows in Paris earlier this month. After sitting through show after show of clothes fit to wear only on stage, in a mental hospital or at a homeless shelter -- including tutus, straitjackets and ball gowns held together with bits of string -- everyone from the tabloids to The New York Times either fell about laughing or got miffed. Finally, it seemed, it was time to call the emperors' bluff on their new clothes.

Not so fast, said the emperors of design. Who said anything about clothes? Haute couture is not about clothes; it's about art. People are not necessarily expected to wear these handmade, one-of-a-kind "pieces." (They can if they want, but who would, at $25,000 a pop? What if you spilled ketchup on it?) Clients evidently understand this: One Lebanese customer was in the news again last week for having made her "usual" 20 or 25 purchases in Paris, where most make do with one. Many of them, she says, are purely "collection pieces": articles for hanging up and looking at, the way many foreigners in Japan hang antique kimono -- or, better yet, traditional Japanese work pants or faded old indigo jackets -- on their walls.