The first
fashion designer who was not merely a dressmaker was Charles
Frederick Worth (1826–1895). Before the former draper set up his
fashion house in Paris, clothing design and creation was handled by
largely anonymous seamstresses, and high fashion descended from
styles worn at royal courts. Worth's success was such that he was
able to dictate the fashion to his customers what they should wear,
instead of following their lead as earlier dressmakers had done.
Later many fashion design houses began to hire artists to sketch or
paint designs for garments. Their fashion images alone could be
presented to clients much more cheaply than by producing an actual
sample garment in the workroom. If the client liked the fashion
design, they ordered it and the resulting garment made money for the
house. Thus, the tradition of designers sketching out fashion
garment designs instead of presenting completed garments on models
to customers began as an economy.
Throughout the early 20th century, practically all high fashion
originated in Paris, and to a lesser extent London. Fashion
magazines from other countries sent editors to the Paris fashion
shows. Department stores sent buyers to the Paris shows, where they
purchased garments to copy (and openly stole the style lines and
trim details of others). Both made-to-measure salons and
ready-to-wear departments featured the latest Paris fashions,
adapted to the stores' assumptions about the lifestyles and pocket
books of their targeted customers.
At this time in fashion history the division between haute couture
and ready-to-wear was not sharply defined. The two separate modes of
production were still far from being competitors, and, indeed, they
often co-existed in fashion houses where the seamstresses moved
freely between made-to-measure and ready-made fashions.
Around the start of the twentieth-century fashion magazines began to
include photographs and became even more influential in the fashion
world than in the past. In cities throughout the world these fashion
magazines were greatly sought-after and had a profound effect on
public taste.
The Second World War created many radical changes in the fashion
industry. After the War, Paris's reputation as the global center of
fashion began to crumble and off-the-peg and mass-manufactured
fashions became increasingly popular. A new youth style emerged in
the Fifties, changing the focus of fashion forever. As the
installation of central heating became more widespread the age of
minimum-care garments began and lighter textiles and, eventually,
synthetics, were introduced into the fashion scene.
During the late twentieth century, fashions began to cris-cross
international boundaries with rapidity. Popular Western fashions
were adopted all over the world, and many designers from outside of
the West had a profound impact on fashion. Synthetic materials such
as Lycra, Spandex, and viscose became widely-used, and fashion,
after two decades of looking to the future, once again turned to the
past for inspiration. |
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