Designer clothing

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Designer clothing in a shop window in Beverly Hills Yves Saint Laurent Beverly Hills.jpg
Designer clothing in a shop window in Beverly Hills

Designer clothing is clothing designed by a particular fashion designer or licensed by a person or brand. It is often luxury clothing proven to be high quality and haute couture for the general public, made by, or carrying the label of, a well-known designer. Licensing of designer names has been a common practice within the fashion industry since about the 1970s. Designer clothing comprises numerous types of apparel, including designer jeans that often cost several hundreds of dollars.

Contents

Description

Designer clothing originally referred to clothing designed by a particular person. The meaning was expanded to include designs licensed by a designer or company. Licensing of designer names was pioneered by designers like Pierre Cardin in the 1960s and has been a common practice within the fashion industry since about the 1970s. [1] Designer clothing is often expensive luxury clothing proven to be high quality and haute couture for the general public, made by, or carrying the label of, a well-known fashion designer.[ citation needed ]

Brands

Brands are often used to identify designer clothing. Designer clothing may not be created by the founder of the company. For example, the actual designer of Chanel is not its original founder and designer, Gabrielle Chanel, but French designer Virginie Viard. The quality of the clothing and the degree of its resemblance, if any, to the designer's work vary considerably depending on the licensee and the terms of the agreement the designer has struck. Some terms may limit the number of garment styles that may be produced, allowing the designer to veto any designs he or she finds unappealing. Examples include:

Types

Designer clothing comprises numerous types of apparel, including designer jeans.

Designer jeans

Staff working at the Armani Jeans store in the Hong Kong Central IFC Mall. 2012. HK Central IFC Mall shop interior Armani Jeans visitors May-2012.JPG
Staff working at the Armani Jeans store in the Hong Kong Central IFC Mall. 2012.
A shop named CONS Jeans in the Albanian city of Shkodra. 2008. Shkoder 030.JPG
A shop named CONS Jeans in the Albanian city of Shkodra. 2008.
The interior of the JC Jeans and Clothes boutique in Stockholm, Sweden. 2011. Hotorget-1.jpg
The interior of the JC Jeans and Clothes boutique in Stockholm, Sweden. 2011.
Facade of the Pepe Jeans boutique in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 2009. Belfast (201), October 2009.JPG
Facade of the Pepe Jeans boutique in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 2009.

Designer jeans are available at many different price points usually at several hundreds of dollars, with some even approaching US$1,000. [2] Before the Great Recession, premium denim was one of the fastest growing categories of the apparel business, and there seemed to be no limit to what customers would pay for the latest label, fit, finish, or wash. [3]

Americans bought US$59.2 billion of jeans in 2018 with over 450 million pairs sold, according to Alexander Eser,. [4] But only about 1% of jeans sold in the U.S. over that year cost more than $50. [5] Since the "Great Recession," the landscape for premium jeans has changed: "Charging $600 for jeans for no reason at all — those days are over," said You Nguyen, the senior vice president of women's merchandising and design for Levi Strauss & Company. [3]

The difference between the $300 jeans and the $30 jeans often has to do with the fabric quality, hardware, washes, design details, abrasions, and where they are manufactured. A "fancy" pair of jeans that has been treated with abrasions, extra washes, etc., to break the denim down to achieve a texture has undergone a certain amount of damage to get the 'worn in' feel. In this sense, the expensive jeans may be more delicate than the cheap ones. Jeans brands also try to stand out from season to season by using patented materials, such as rivets and stitching, and by using special washes and distressing methods. These might involve dying, pressing, and even using sandpaper and drills on the raw jeans. These methods can be particularly expensive when done in the U.S., where factories must meet more stringent environmental and labor standards than in many low-cost nations. [5]

To be produced domestically (in the United States), jeans have to be priced at "$200-plus," says Shelda Hartwell-Hale, a vice president at Directives West, an L.A.-based division of fashion consulting firm Doneger Group. [5] The profit margins on premium jeans can be substantial. One retail executive says his gross profit margins for private-label jeans, which he makes for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Sears Holdings Corp., and other retailers, are less than 20%, whereas the margins for his own premium lines are 40%-to-50%. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fashion</span> Stylish clothing

Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeans</span> Pants/trousers made from denim or dungaree cloth

Jeans are a type of pants or trousers made from denim or dungaree cloth. Often the term "jeans" refers to a particular style of trousers, called "blue jeans", with the addition of copper pocket rivets added by Jacob W. Davis in 1871 and patented by Davis and Levi Strauss on May 20, 1873. Prior to the patent, the term "blue jeans" had been long in use for various garments, constructed from blue-colored denim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ready-to-wear</span> Mass-produced clothing in standard sizes

Ready-to-wear (RTW) – also called prêt-à-porter, or off-the-rack or off-the-peg in casual use – is the term for garments sold in finished condition in standardized sizes, as distinct from made-to-measure or bespoke clothing tailored to a particular person's frame. In other words, it is a piece of clothing that was mass produced in different sizes and sold that way instead of it being designed and sewn for one person. The term off-the-peg is sometimes used for items other than clothing, such as handbags. It is the opposite of haute couture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thigh-high boots</span> Boots extending above the knee

Thigh-high boots, known also as thigh-length boots or simply thigh boots, are boots that extend above the knees to at least mid-thigh. Other terms for this footwear include over-the-knee boots, a name originally used for 15th century riding boots for men. These are sometimes called pirate boots, especially when cuffed. Over-the-knee boots are sometimes abbreviated to OTK boots. Lengths vary from reaching just over the knee to reaching almost to the crotch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chanel</span> French fashion house

Chanel is a French luxury fashion house founded in 1910 by Coco Chanel in Paris. It is privately owned by the Wertheimer family and has been headquartered in London since 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jordache</span> American clothing, real estate and aviation company

Jordache Enterprises, Inc. is an American clothing company that markets apparel, including shirts, jeans, and outerwear. The brand is known for its designer jeans that were popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since the 2000s, Jordache has also diversified into real estate in the United States and other ventures in Israel. The brand name Jordache is a contraction of Joe, Ralph, David, and Avi Naccache (Nakash).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">7 for All Mankind</span> American denim brand

7 For All Mankind is an American denim brand founded by Michael Glasser, Peter Koral, and Jerome Dahan in 2000 and headquartered in Vernon, California. It was purchased by the VF Corporation in 2007 and sold to Delta Galil Industries in 2016.

Alfred Sung is a Canadian fashion designer and businessman. He is well known for producing apparel, fragrance, accessories and home fashions for women and men. He was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. Sung is the brother of late Hong Kong actress Lydia Shum. He is also a founder of Club Monaco, a mid-priced, high-end casual clothing retailer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Designer label</span> Products sold under a marque named after a designer

The term designer label refers to clothing, luxury automobile manufacturers and other personal accessory items sold under an often prestigious marque which is commonly named after a designer, founder, or a location-like where the company was founded. The term is most often applied to luxury goods. While members of the upper middle class, or the mass affluent, are perhaps the most commonly targeted customers of these designer labels, some marquees—such as Cartier, Rolex, Montblanc and the haute couture — tend to a wealthier customer base. But almost every designer brand has merchandise that the middle-class wouldn't normally be able to afford, such as exotic skins, furs and hides, limited edition pieces, or things simply priced higher. Designer label companies use their smaller and cheaper merchandise, aimed at the middle class, such as wallets, fashion jewellery, key-rings and small accessories, to make the majority of their income, whilst the more expensive pieces such as haute couture, high jewellery, hand-bags, shoes and even furnishings are usually reserved for the wealthier upper-class clientele.

"Fashion victim" is a term claimed to have been coined by Oscar de la Renta that is used to identify a person who is unable to identify commonly recognized boundaries of style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fashion design</span> Art of applying design and aesthetics to clothing and accessories

Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."

The Great Western Garment Company (GWG) was a Canadian denim and western wear clothing company founded in 1911 in Edmonton, Alberta by Charles A. Graham and Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first Premier of Alberta. The company was acquired by Levi Strauss, starting in 1961.

A cruise collection or resort collection or resort wear sometimes also holiday or travel collection, is an inter-season or pre-season line of ready-to-wear clothing produced by a fashion house or fashion brand in addition to the recurrent biannual seasonal collections — spring/summer and autumn /winter — heralded at the fashion shows in New York, London, Paris, and Milan.

<i>Haute couture</i> Creation of exclusive, custom-fitted clothing

Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term haute couture is French, "haute" meaning "high" or "elegant," and "couture" translating to "sewing" or "dressmaking." The term haute couture generally refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from the skirt and sleeves. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became the centre of a growing industry that focused on making outfits from high-quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable of sewers—often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and can often refer to the same thing in spirit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sportswear (fashion)</span> Fashion category of relaxed day clothes, originally separates

Sportswear is an American fashion term originally used to describe separates, but which since the 1930s has come to be applied to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their design, while remaining appropriate for a wide range of social occasions. The term is not necessarily synonymous with activewear, clothing designed specifically for participants in sporting pursuits. Although sports clothing was available from European haute couture houses and "sporty" garments were increasingly worn as everyday or informal wear, the early American sportswear designers were associated with ready-to-wear manufacturers. While most fashions in America in the early 20th century were directly copied from, or influenced heavily by Paris, American sportswear became a home-grown exception to this rule, and could be described as the American Look. Sportswear was designed to be easy to look after, with accessible fastenings that enabled a modern emancipated woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance.

Frank Mechaly in Marseille, France and raised in St. Tropez, is a jeans designer and brand maker, specializing in premium denim. Though he has successfully launched a number of brands including Sacred Blue and Blue Cult, he is probably best known as the founder and creator of 575 DENIM which has been embraced by celebrities such as Cameron Diaz who made a point of publicly acknowledging her affinity for the jeans during an appearance on Saturday Night Live. Mechaly has now launched his much-anticipated new brand of premium denim called RockStar.

True Religion Brand Jeans is an American clothing company established in 2002 by Jeff Lubell and Kym Gold and is based in Vernon, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tilmann Wröbel</span>

Tilmann Wröbel is a Franco-German fashion designer born in 1964 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He is currently working and living in both Biarritz, France and Düsseldorf, Germany.

DSTLD is an American clothing company, founded in 2014 by Corey Epstein, Ryan Jaleh and Mark Lynn and backed by Asher New York Holdings. The California-based company designs and retails a line of mostly denim-based clothing. The company has become known for its relatively affordable pricing, environmentally friendly design and manufacturing, a direct-to-consumer retail strategy.

The term "fashion brand" includes all the brands that operate within the fashion industry. A fashion brand combines symbolism, style, and experiential elements, and it needs to differentiate its products and coordinate its supply chain to succeed in the market. Consumers commonly employ brands as a means of expressing either their genuine identity or an idealized self-image that they aspire to achieve.

References

  1. Walker, Myra. "Pierre Cardin". www.lovetoknow.com. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
  2. "Urbanworld Designer Jeans worth over US$1,000". July 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  3. 1 2 Wilson, Eric (28 October 2009). "Preshrunk Prices". The New York Times .
  4. Eser, Alexander. "Essential Jeans Industry Statistics In 2024". zipdo. zipdo. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Binkley, Christina (7 July 2011). "How Can Jeans Cost $300?". Wall Street Journal.

Further reading