The Story of Fashion

Fashion is a lot more than clothing and trends. Fashion embraces a large part of human life, from speech to manners and dress.

Fashion is a medium that is able to tell stories with powerful narratives. This narrative is constantly challenged by new and innovative aesthetics and behaviors, therefore resulting in constant changes in the stability and conservative customs in the society.

Fashion is a group or individual choice that is adopted by a larger mass of people. Therefore, fashion may be seen as a mirror of society. The close relation to society, culture, and environment is what keeps fashion growing and constantly changing.

Clothes and trends give us pleasure and cover, but they also reflect the cultural, economic and social changes around us. These changes helped the evolving of fashion to become what it is today; an idea and an ideal.

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Haute Couture – how it all started

Dating back at the beginning of the modern period, wealthy and powerful people had their own servants as dressmakers to take care of their lavish clothes. With the growing economic and cultural power, the 17th century Paris is considered to be the birthplace of the haute couture.

Haute couture is a French term for what is still today considered high-fashion. Moreover, the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothes made by hand from start to finish. As it was centuries ago, today also, haute couture clothes are made of high-quality, expensive fabrics featuring unusual styles that are supposed to be unique and therefore to set a new trend. Haute couture garment is made for a special client and tailored according to the specific measures and body shape, or in today’s instance for a specific fashion line or a famous client.

A couturier is an experienced and capable sewer, who with extreme attention and great skills produces original garments. In today’s words, fashion designer– the artist of clothing. The extreme attention and hand-executed techniques along with the most important – the original idea is what makes a fashion designer.

The term was originally used to refer to an Englishmen that marked the French fashion industry and history. Revolutionizing the dressmaking process, Charles Frederick Worth was also the first to make clothing line designs and present them in what it was supposed to be a fashion show. Looking at the new designs on the dress forms, his wealthy customers selected a model and chose fabrics and colors for their next big fashion statement.

In modern fashion discourse, haute couture is a label that refers only to firms that meet certain well-defined standards. However, the term is also used to describe custom-fitted clothing produced by fashion designers that are influential in the high-fashion.

Haute couture garment is the most valuable piece of clothing a person can possess, both in artistic and materialistic value.

Fashion Trends

While high fashion and haute couture are constantly changing so are the fashion trends as they go hand by hand. High fashion is the place where new trends are born and released. They are introduced mostly on designer’s fashion shows and influenced by their customers. Moreover, the trendsetters – celebrities, artists, musicians, actors are those who are considered fashion icons and powerful enough to be couturier’s customers.

Nowadays, fashion trends change rapidly. The massive use of social media, where most of the fashion trends are presented, has the power to reach a large audience in no time. Moreover, a trend can be spread very quickly if the influencer has enough followers to notice it.

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Sustainable Fashion

Fashion today has become a massive industry, therefore clothing companies have a huge impact on our natural environment. The main responsibility of fashion companies is to change their strategies towards production in order to achieve greater sustainability.

What does sustainable fashion mean? Sustainable fashion is a concept for creating a system that will be less harmful to the environment taking in consideration that the clothing industry has a high impact on the planet’s pollution.

The growing awareness among consumers, especially younger generations encourage more and more brands to start working in an environmentally friendly manner. Therefore, companies are constructing different strategies that will promote environmentally and socially conscious production.

For brands to achieve the eco brand label they start producing clothes that are made from recycled materials. Moreover, producing a „green“ product includes using dying fabrics that are non-toxic and don’t contaminate the water and the air. The manufacturing factories need to comply with strict regulations on environmental protection.

As for the customers, following sustainable fashion trends may mean more than wearing and buying recycled clothes. Moreover, they can try and follow these eco-trends to help the rising of sustainable fashion and to protect our planet:

• Clothing swap – the number one sustainable solution is to change your old clothes with old-new clothes. Just swap whatever you don’t feel like wearing with an old piece of clothing from another sustainable fashionista. You can find FB groups that promote clothes swiping. It’s fun and it means a lot to the eco-system.
• Buy second-hand or vintage clothes – vintage clothes can be expensive but you might as well be lucky and find a quality and valuable piece. However, by buying second-hand you are decreasing the demand for the production of new clothes.
• Slow fashion – buying high-quality clothes that you’ll be wearing for a longer period of time. The essentials and pieces that are truly your style can be durable if you take good care of them. When you damage something, try to find a way to repair it, rather than tossing it aside and buying a new one.
• Natural and organic products – buying naturalcosmetic products is another important factor in the eco-friendly industry. Minimal products that use organic ingredients are good for your health and for the whole environment. Choose wisely!
• Organic cotton – clothes made from organic cotton are environmentally friendly. It doesn’t pollute and protects wildlife. Organic fabrics like Tencel, hemp or lensing, offer great qualities and require less water for production.
• Buy recycled and 100% materials – clothes made from 100%of the same material (ex.100% cotton, or wool) are the only who can be later recycled. Moreover, there is still no technology available that can separate blended materials. That means that you can later buy your 100% cotton t-shirt as a new and recycled clothing item.

Link to Jyoti’s original article here.