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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