Types of Fashion in Clothing

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 - Wedding Dress

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 an 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 Market Fashion - Gap

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.
 
Sources:
http://www.wikipedia.com
http://textilesindepth-fashiondesigning.blogspot.com/2011/09/types-of-fashion-design.html