This essay stems from a paper presented at the Costume Society’s Annual Symposium in Leeds in July 2010 on the theme of The Price of Fashion. In this expanded version, the author identifies the construction of stylisme, a new ready-to-wear model in 1960s France, in the pages of Elle magazine. Contextualized in a changing industrial and social landscape, the essay questions how these new depictions of stylisme served to improve consumers’ ideas on ready-to-wear clothing in an industry previously fuelled by haute couture.