Fashion design
"A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers.
Due to the time required to put a garment out on the market, designers must anticipate changes to consumer desires.
Fashion designers are responsible for creating looks for individual garments, involving shape, color, fabric, trimming, and more.
They consider who is likely to wear a garment and the situations in which it will be worn, and they work with a wide range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles.
Garment design includes components of "color, texture, space, lines, pattern, silhouette, shape, proportion, balance, emphasis, rhythm, and harmony".
Fashion designers work in various ways, some start with a vision in their head and later move into drawing it on paper or on a computer, while others go directly into draping fabric onto a dress form, also known as a mannequin.
Before the former draper set up his maison couture (fashion house) in Paris, clothing design and creation of the garments were handled largely by anonymous seamstresses.
Rather than going straight into manufacturing, the images were shown to clients to gain approval, which saved time and money for the designer.
Garments produced by clothing manufacturers fall into three main categories, although these may be split up into additional, different types.
Until the 1950s, fashion clothing was predominately designed and manufactured on a made-to-measure or haute couture basis (French for high-sewing), with each garment being created for a specific client.
[8][9] Due to the high cost of each garment, haute couture makes little direct profit for the fashion houses, but is important for prestige and publicity.
During the Make{able} workshop, Hirscher and Niinimaki found that personal involvement in the garment-making process created a meaningful "narrative" for the user, which established a person-product attachment and increased the sentimental value of the final product.
The mass market caters for a wide range of customers, producing ready-to-wear garments using trends set by the famous names in fashion.
[13][14][15] There is a type of design called "kutch" originated from the German word kitschig, meaning "trashy" or "not aesthetically pleasing".
[17] The highest number of employment lies within Apparel, Piece Goods, and Notions Merchant Wholesalers with a percentage of 5.4.
Most fashion houses in the United States are based in New York City, with a high concentration centered in the Garment District neighborhood.
American fashion design is highly diverse, reflecting the enormous ethnic diversity of the population, but is largely dominated by a clean-cut, urban, hip aesthetic, and often favors a more casual style, reflecting the athletic, health-conscious lifestyles of the suburban and urban middle classes.
[20][21] Prominent American brands and designers include Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Coach, Nike, Vans, Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, Tom Ford, Caswell-Massey, Michael Kors, Levi Strauss and Co., Estée Lauder, Revlon, Kate Spade, Alexander Wang, Vera Wang, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany and Co., Converse, Oscar de la Renta, John Varvatos, Anna Sui, Prabal Gurung, Bill Blass, Halston, Carhartt, Brooks Brothers, Stuart Weitzman, Diane von Furstenberg, J.
Crew, American Eagle Outfitters, Steve Madden, Abercrombie and Fitch, Juicy Couture, Thom Browne, Guess, Supreme, and The Timberland Company.
[22] London has long been the capital of the United Kingdom fashion industry and has a wide range of foreign designs which have integrated with modern British styles.
Typical British design is smart but innovative yet recently has become more and more unconventional, fusing traditional styles with modern techniques.
Well-known British designers include Thomas Burberry, Alfred Dunhill, Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney, Jimmy Choo, John Galliano, John Richmond, Alexander McQueen, Matthew Williamson, Gareth Pugh, Hussein Chalayan and Neil Barrett.
Famous designers include Manolo Blahnik, Elio Berhanyer, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Paco Rabanne, Adolfo Domínguez, Manuel Pertegaz, Jesús del Pozo, Felipe Varela and Agatha Ruiz de la Prada.
Spain is also home to large fashion brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Pull&Bear, Mango, Desigual, Pepe Jeans and Camper.
[25] Lakme Fashion Week in India takes place twice a year and is held in the populous city of Mumbai.
The Japanese look is loose and unstructured (often resulting from complicated cutting), colors tend to the sombre and subtle, and richly textured fabrics.
Famous Japanese designers include Kenzo Takada, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo.
In addition, shortages of consumer goods meant that the general public did not have ready access to pre-made fashion.
Huipil a blouse characterized by a "loose, sleeveless tunic made of two or three joined webs of cloth sewn lengthwise"[31] is an important historical garment, often seen today.
[33] With access to European fashion and dress, those with high social status relied on adopting those elements to distinguish themselves from the rest.
