Fashion design

Fashion design is the applied art dedicated to the design of clothing and lifestyle accessories.

Modern fashion design and designers

Modern fashion design is roughly divided into two categories, haute couture, and ready-to-wear. A designer's haute-couture collection is meant exclusively for private customers and is custom sized, cut and sewn. To qualify as an official "haute couture" house, a designer or company must belong to the Syndical Chamber for Haute Couture, a Paris-based body of designers governed by the French Department of Industry that includes American, Italian, Japanese, and other designers as well. A haute couture house must show collections twice yearly with at least 35 separate outfits in each show. It is often shown on the catwalk and in private salons.

Related Topics:
Haute couture - Ready-to-wear - Syndical Chamber for Haute Couture

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Ready-to-wear collections are not custom made. They are standard sized which makes them more suitable for larger productions. Ready-to-wear collections can also be divided into designers/createur collections and Confection collections. Designer/createur collections have a high quality, a superb finish and a unique cut and design. These collections are the most trendsetting compared to Haute Couture and Confection. Designer/createurs ready to wear collections contain often concept items that represent a certain philosophy or theory. These items are not so much created for sales but just to make a statement. The designer's ready-to-wear collection is also presented on the international catwalks by people who do fashion modeling.

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Confection collections are the ones we see most commonly in our shops. These collections are designed by stylists. The brands that produce these collections aim only for a mass public and are in general not searching for new grammar for the language or a new point of view on/of fashion.

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Although many modern fashion designers work in a "traditional" way -- making clothes that are fancy and expensive, but still based on standard/traditional construction and design concepts -- some designers have broken these "rules" over the years. These include some now-deceased designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli, who worked in the thirties, forties, and fifties; Japanese designers Yohji Yamomoto, Comme des Garcons, and Junya Watanabe from the early eighties to the present; and designers from the mid-nineties onward. Fine examples of modern-day "rule breakers" are Martin Margiela and Warmenhoven & Venderbos. These designers approach clothing, Fashion and lifestyle from new angles and explore also the boundaries of Fashion itself in order to create "new" concepts and views for fashion design. Their collections are not only restricted to garments (ready to wear as well as couture) and other fashion-related products, but also contain work in other media. The works of this breed of designers can also be placed in a certain Art movement.

Related Topics:
Elsa Schiaparelli - Yohji Yamomoto - Comme des Garcons - Junya Watanabe - Martin Margiela - Warmenhoven & Venderbos - Art movement

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Most fashion designers attend an Academie of fine arts. Fashion design courses are considered applied arts just like graphic design and interior design.

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The types of fashion designer -- stylist versus designer -- are often confused. A stylist inspires his/her designs on existing things, trends and designers collections. A designer starts from scratch; he/she develops a unique concept and translates this into garment collections, other lifestyle related products or a statement in various other types of media. Some designers approach their work just as a fine arts painter or sculptor.

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Inspiration for fashion designers comes from a wide range of things and cannot be pinpointed exactly. However, just like all artists, they tend to keep an eye on things going on world-wide to inspire themselves towards making their future clothes lines.

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Most fashion designers are well trained pattern makers and modeleurs. A typical design team is made up of one or more: designer(s), pattern maker(s) /modeleur(s), sample maker(s), buyer(s) and salesman (men). For presentations and catwalk shows the help of hair dressers, make-up artists, photographers, modeling agencies, the model and other support companies/professions is called upon.

Related Topics:
Hair dresser - Make-up artist - Photographer - Modeling agencies - Model

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As fashion became more and more a large business, designers also began to license products (for example, perfume and bags).

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