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Fashion shows, generally, fall in to two categories, Couture and Prêt-à -Porter (Ready to Wear).
Prêt-à -Porter shows are about a designer or a design house showing a specific line of clothes that they hope to sell in to a retail channel - these are the stuff you will eventually see "on the rack", and usually with modifications to meet the cost limitations of a specific market niche (higher end vs lower market). Couture shows are about the designer as an artist, showing off their creativity, without restraints. The intention is to keep the artist in the limelight or raise an emerging artist up to being noticed, and thus gain contracts to produce a line or gain individual clients. What these shows do sell is the concept and style of a designer, such as how someone perceives color, whether they have muted taste or are outlandish in their sensibilities or not (current Dior vs Versace, as an example), and what kind of vision they have as a creative. They have no intention of marketing these ideas as a product, though.
Don't confuse couture in the general sense with Haute Couture, though, as the later is a legal designation in France of which only a hand full of designer houses belong, which create expensive, custom made clothes for the wealthy (for men, it's called Bespoke Tailoring). An Haute Couture house will also have lines which are for the general public, too, such as Dior, Giorgio Armani, Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier
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