Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion industry as that which is trending. Everything that is considered fashion is available and popularized by the fashion system.
Clothing are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural products found in the environment, put together. The wearing of clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. The amount and type of clothing worn depends on gender, body type, social factors, and geographic considerations. Garments cover the body, footwear covers the feet, gloves cover the hands, while hats and headgear cover the head. Eyewear and jewelry are not generally considered items of clothing, but play an important role in fashion and clothing as costume.
The New York State University College of Human Ecology (HumEc) is a statutory college located on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The College of Human Ecology is a compilation of area of study, such as design, design thinking, consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each through the perspective of human ecology.
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant-garde, which rejected aesthetic values in favour of revolutionary ones. Her activities extended into propaganda, poetry, stage scenery and textile designs.
Fashion law is a specific field of law that deals with legal issues that impact the fashion industry. Fundamental issues in fashion law include intellectual property; business and finance, with subcategories ranging from employment and labor law to real estate; international trade and government regulation, including questions of safety and sustainability; dress codes and religious apparel; consumer culture; privacy and wearable tech; and civil rights. Fashion law also includes related areas such as textile production, modeling, media, and the cosmetics and perfume industries.
Dame Zandra Lindsey Rhodes,, is an English fashion and textile designer. Her early education in fashion set the foundation for a career in the industry creating textile prints. Rhodes designed garments for Diana, Princess of Wales and numerous celebrities such as rock stars Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan. In addition to designing garments, she designed textiles for interiors, featuring her prints on furniture and homewares. In 2003 Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.
Textile geometry is the creative and technical process by which thread or yarn fibers are woven together or interlaced to form a flexible, functional, and decorative cloth or fabric which is subsequently printed upon or otherwise adorned. Textile design is further broken down into three major disciplines, printed textile design, woven textile design, and mixed media textile design, each of which utilize different methods to produce a surface ornamented fabric for variable uses and markets. Textile Design as a practice has evolved to become an industry integral to other disciplines such as fashion, interior design, and fine arts.
Fast fashion is a term used to describe a highly profitable and exploitative business model based on replicating catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at low cost. The term fast fashion is also used to generically describe the products of the fast fashion business model. The fast fashion business model was made possible during the late 20th century as manufacturing of cloth became cheaper and easier, through new materials like polyester and nylon, efficient supply chains and quick response manufacturing methods, and inexpensive labour in sweatshop production and low-labour protection bulk clothing manufacturing industries in South, South East, and East Asia. Companies like H&M and Zara, built business models based on inexpensive clothing from the efficient production lines, to create more seasonal and trendy designs that are aggressively marketed to fashion-conscious consumers. Fast fashion applies an extreme version of planned obsolescence to clothing. Because these designs are changing so quickly and are so cheap, consumers buy more clothing than they would previously, so expectations for those clothes to last decrease. Stealing designs is also common.
Helen Brockman was an American fashion designer, author and professor.
Sustainable fashion is a movement and process of fostering change to fashion products and the fashion system towards greater ecological integrity and social justice. Sustainable fashion concerns more than just addressing fashion textiles or products. It addresses the entire manner in which clothing is produced, who produces it, and how long the life span of a product is before it reaches the landfill. Sustainable fashion encourages the use of locally produced, biodegradable fabrics which have little to no adverse effects on the environment. This sustainable movement combats the huge carbon footprint that fast fashion has created by reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Electronic textiles or e-textiles are fabrics that enable digital components such as a battery and a light, and electronics to be embedded in them. "Smart textiles" are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value to the wearer. Pailes-Friedman of the Pratt Institute states that "what makes smart fabrics revolutionary is that they have the ability to do many things that traditional fabrics cannot, including communicate, transform, conduct energy and even grow".
Zero-waste fashion refers to items of clothing that generate little or no textile waste in their production. It can be considered to be a part of the broader Sustainable fashion movement. It can be divided into two general approaches. Pre-consumer zero-waste fashion eliminates waste during manufacture. Post-consumer zero-waste fashion generates clothing from post-consumer garments such as second-hand clothing, eliminating waste at what would normally be the end of the product use life of a garment. Zero-waste fashion is not a new concept - early examples of zero-waste or near zero-waste garments include Kimono, Sari, Chiton and many other traditional folk costumes.
The Clothing & Textiles Research Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of Social Sciences. The journal's editor is Youn-Kyung Lydia Kim, Department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. It has been in publication since 1982 and is currently published by SAGE Publications in association with the International Textiles and Apparel Association.
Helen Storey, MBE, RDI, FRSA is a British artist and designer living and working in London. She is Professor of Fashion Science at the University of the Arts, London and Co-Director of The Helen Storey Foundation.
Leah Buechley is an American educator, engineer and designer who is best known as the developer of the LilyPad Arduino toolkit and other smart textiles.
University of Minnesota College of Design is located on both the Saint Paul and Minneapolis campuses of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. The College of Design includes the full range of design disciplines and is home to eight undergraduate majors in the fields of architecture, apparel design, graphic design, interior design, landscape architecture, product design, and retail merchandising. There are 23 graduate degree programs, eight undergraduate minors, nine research centers, and the Goldstein Museum of Design.
Clothing industry or garment industry summarizes the types of trade and industry along the production and value chain of clothing and garments, starting with the textile industry, embellishment using embroidery, via the fashion industry to apparel retailers up to trade with second-hand clothes and textile recycling. The producing sectors build upon a wealth of clothing technology some of which, like the loom, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine heralded industrialization not only of the previous textile manufacturing practices.
Although elements of fashion design copyright may be traced in Europe to as early as the 15th century, as of 2016 most countries fashion design does not have the same protection as other creative works, because apparel are classified as "functional items", excluded from protection by copyright laws. This explains the success of the knockoff businesses to the detriment of both the established labels, as well as of emerging designers, the latter ones being especially damaged, because they rely on relatively few designs.
Maja Margita Gunn is a Swedish fashion designer, design researcher and academic who has specialized in lesbian and gender clothing. In December 2017, she was appointed Professor of Crafts at the Gothenburg University Design School.
Textile performance, also known as fitness for purpose, is a textile's capacity to withstand various conditions, environments, and hazards, qualifying it for particular uses. The performance of textile products influences their appearance, comfort, durability, and protection. Different textile applications require a different set of performance parameters. As a result, the specifications determine the level of performance of a textile product. Textile testing certifies the product's conformity to buying specification. It describes product manufactured for non-aesthetic purposes, where fitness for purpose is the primary criterion. Engineering of high performance fabrics presents a unique set of challenges.
