Fashion is something we deal with every day. Even people who say
they don't care what they wear, they choose clothes every morning that say a
lot about them and how they feel that day. Fashion design is influenced by cultural
and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. A fashion usually
remains popular for about 1-3 years and then is replaced by yet another
fashion. Even though there are a lot of changes in fashion, most people do not
easily accept the changes.
A clothing style may be introduced as a fashion, but its use
becomes a custom after being handed down from generation to generation.
Clothing is made out of all types of material such as cotton, rayon, spandex,
and polyester, and they are just a few used. Some clothing may even be made of
2 or more different types.
Fashion
designers attempt to design clothes which are functional as well as
aesthetically pleasing. They must consider who is likely to wear a garment and
the situations in which it will be worn. They have a wide range and
combinations of materials to work with and a wide range of colors, patterns and
styles to choose from. Though most clothing worn for everyday wear fall within
a narrow range of conventional styles, the
unique and trendy garments are usually sought for special occasions,
such as evening wear or party dresses.
The garments produced by clothing manufacturers fall into three main
categories: Haute couture, Ready-to-wear, and Mass market.
Haute couture (French for "high sewing" or
"high dressmaking") refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted
clothing. Until the 1950s, fashion clothing was predominately designed and
manufactured on a made-to-measure or haute couture basis with each garment
being created for a specific client. Haute couture is made to order for
a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality and expensive
fabric. It is sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most
experienced and capable seamstresses, often using time-consuming, hand-executed
techniques. The made to measure exclusive clothes are virtually made by hand,
carefully interlined, stay taped and fitted to perfection for each
client. In addition the client would get a perfection of fit only achieved
by painstaking methods of cutting and fitting to the client's body. The
manual labor needed to produce a garment this way takes between 100-150 hours
for a suit and up to 1000 hours for an embellished evening dress. The
purchase of an haute couture model garment is at the top level of hand
customized fashion design and clothing construction made by a couture design
house. A model haute couture garment is made specifically for the
wearer's measurements and body stance. A couture house like Chanel for
example will have about 150 regular clients who buy couture and a house like
Dior will make about 20 couture bridal gowns a year. When a customer decides to
order a Haute Couture garment she needs to first make an appointment with the
design house prior to any visit to Paris. Model garments from collections
are sometimes out of the country being presented elsewhere. Some couture
houses provide a video of the collection to serious purchasers.
Ready-to-wear
Relative to couture, ready-to-wear clothing is often more
practical and informal. It is the term for factory-made clothing, sold
in finished condition and in standardized sizes. Ready-to-wear clothes are a
cross between haute couture and mass market. They are not made for individual
customers, but great care is taken in the choice and cut of the fabric. Clothes
are made in small quantities to guarantee exclusivity, so they are rather
expensive. They use standard patterns, factory equipment, and faster
construction techniques to keep costs low, compared to a custom-sewn version of
the same item. The construction of ready-to-wear clothing is also held to
different standard than that of haute couture due to its industrial
nature. High-end ready-to-wear lines are sometimes based upon a famous gown or
pattern that is then duplicated and advertised to raise the visibility of the
designer. In high-end fashion, ready-to-wear collections are usually presented
by fashion houses each season during a period known as Fashion Week. This event
takes place on a city-wide basis and are held twice a year- the Fall/Winter
shows take place in February, whilst Spring/Summer collections are shown in
September.
The mass market is a general business term describing the
largest group of consumers for a specified industry product. The mass market is
the group of consumers who occupy the overwhelming mass of a bell curve for
fashion trend/ clothing, i.e. they could be tagged as being average. T this
group consists of such a wide variety of people; their desires towards a
certain product may be totally different from each other. Often competition to
supply the large market is fierce, but relatively easy to enter because of the
mass amount of customer base available. Some consumers are concerned with
quality, some with classic design, some with price and some with all of the
above. Mass merchants try to appeal to
the masses (the majority), and the fashion boutiques attempt to appeal to the
taste level of the fringe. The specialty
shops in mass market are typically smaller scale and have the ability to focus
on the specific needs of each individual shopper. Mass merchants are faced with the ever
changing fashion landscape. Fashion trends seem to go out of fashion very often. Therefore, it is challenging for a fashion
boutique or a mass merchant to maintain stock levels of the most current
fashion. Presently, the fashion industry
relies more on mass market sales. The mass market caters for a wide range of
customers, producing ready-to-wear clothes in large quantities and standard
sizes. Inexpensive materials, creatively used, produce affordable fashion. Mass
market designers generally adapt the trends set by the famous names in fashion.
They often wait around a season to make sure a style is going to catch on
before producing their own versions of the original look. In order to save
money and time, they use cheaper fabrics and simpler production techniques
which can easily be done by machine. The end product can therefore be sold much
more cheaply.
Thus, Fashion designers conceive garment combinations of
line, proportion, color, and texture to come up with the particular type of
clothing they are interested in making. They work with the design team and the
factories overseas to ensure correct garment construction, make appropriate
fabric choices and a good fit. The technical designer fits the garment samples
on a fit model, and decides which fit and construction changes to make before
mass producing the garment.
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