Percy Savage is a maverick - a man who has led an amazing life in and around the world of designer fashion and who has influenced the way the industry developed. This programme combines and explores the memories he has and the people he knows. It all reveals an intimate world of creative expression, societal change, personal failure, collective triumph and the history of an art synonymous with opulence, luxury and refinement.

It is about a man whose influence was everywhere but is unknown outside the industry. Raised in the Australian outback, Savage arrived in Paris in 1947 - the year Christian Dior launched his New Look. He would later become a friend of the man who revived the glory of couture and inadvertently provided the name for the most famous of Dior fragrances: Eau sauvage. It was at the House of Lanvin that Percy was asked to start the first propaganda department, as it was then called, eventually renaming it PR. During his years in Paris, Savage weaved himself into the Parisian fabric and counted among friends, Dior, Beaton, Cocteau and Maria Callas.

While in Paris he travelled the globe, promoting and exhorting designers, journalists, buyers and manufacturers. He introduced Yves Saint-Laurent to Dior and created the explosion that was Mary Quant. He was PR for Nina Ricci during its heyday before moving to England in the 1970s. Savage had been asked by the powers-that-be to put London on a par with Paris, which he did, albeit at his own expense.

The programme opens amid the refined excitement of the Christian Dior 2004 Spring/Summer couture show. Placing Savage within today's haute couture is made all the more pertinent as the film looks back at a postwar history of fashion, in particular Savage's career in Paris and the foundation of fashion as we recognise it today. This retrospection provides an insight into what makes fashion so fascinating.

It includes an array of stunning footage, and exclusive archive film and photography. The film is narrated by Joanna Lumley and features interviews with Mary Quant, Hubert de Givenchy and Yuki as well as other eminent designers, journalists, historians and executives, exploring the fundamental dynamics of a much-vaunted aesthetic.