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.
Wearable art, also known as Artwear or "art to wear", refers to art pieces in the shape of clothing or jewellery pieces. These pieces are usually handmade, and are produced only once or as a very limited series. Pieces of clothing are often made with fibrous materials and traditional techniques such as crochet, knitting, quilting, but may also include plastic sheeting, metals, paper, and more. While the making of any article of clothing or other wearable object typically involves aesthetic considerations, the term wearable art implies that the work is intended to be accepted as an artistic creation or statement. Wearable art is meant to draw attention while it is being displayed, modeled or used in performances. Pieces may be sold and exhibited.
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 has designed garments for Diana, Princess of Wales and numerous celebrities such as rock stars Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan. She has also designed textiles for interiors, featuring her prints on furniture and homewares. In 2003 Rhodes founded the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.
Yohji Yamamoto is a Japanese fashion designer based in Tokyo and Paris. Considered a master tailor alongside those such as Madeleine Vionnet, he is known for his avant-garde tailoring featuring Japanese design aesthetics.
Hussein Chalayan, is a British-Cypriot fashion designer. He has won the British Designer of the Year twice, and he was awarded the MBE in 2006.
Viktor & Rolf is a Dutch avant-garde luxury fashion house founded in 1993 by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. For more than twenty years, Viktor & Rolf have sought to challenge preconceptions of fashion and bridge the divide between fashion and art. Viktor & Rolf have designed both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. The duo is renowned for their avant-garde designs, which rely heavily on theatrical and performative fashion runways.
History of fashion design refers specifically to the development of the purpose and intention behind garments, shoes ,accessories, and their design and construction. The modern industry, based around firms or fashion houses run by individual designers, started in the 19th century with Charles Frederick Worth who, beginning in 1858, was the first designer to have his label sewn into the garments he created.
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."
Rodarte is an American brand of clothing and accessories founded and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA, by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy.
AKRIS is a Swiss fashion house specializing in luxury goods for women designed by creative director Albert Kriemler.
Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term "Haute couture" is derived from the French language, where "haute" means "high" or "elegant," and "couture" translates to "sewing" or "dressmaking." Bodice is a composition of vesture, traditionally for women and girls, covering the torso from the neck to the waist. 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. Haute translates literally to "high".
Josephus Melchior Thimister was a Dutch interior decorator and noted fashion designer who launched his eponymous fashion label, THIMISTER in 1997. In 2001, the editor-in-chief of Vogue USA Anna Wintour named Josephus Thimister as one of the Twenty-First Century's best fashion designers. In 2010, Cathy Horyn writing for The New York Times described his couture show and its pieces as, "fascinating (…) quite clear in military shapes and broken elegance. Dresses like melted down family silver". After a brief period with Karl Lagerfeld as an assistant, he worked as a designer at Jean Patou before being appointed director of luxury prêt-à-porter at the house of Balenciaga. It was for the next five and a half years that Thimister would spend reviving the brand with his pure, succinctly modernist vision. He then set up his own Paris-based house in 1997, and thereafter presented both haute couture and prêt-à-porter collections under his name.
For decades now, fashion in South Korea has evolved due to inspirations from Western culture in the past, from Korea's wealth, social media practices in Korea as well as the country's highly developed economy. This, with the rise of the Korean Wave has also made Korea highly influential in fashion trends worldwide due to the popularity of its modern pop culture.
Ole Yde is a Danish fashion designer based in Copenhagen. He is the creative director and founder for the fashion house YDE, launched in 2005. YDE is a luxury women’s Prêt-à-Porter Brand based in Copenhagen.
Stirling Cooper was a London-based fashion wholesaler and retailer that, along with brands such as Biba, Quorum, Browns and Clobber, helped to redefine UK fashion in the late 1960s.
Octavio Pizarro is a Franco-Chilean creator born in Santiago, Chile. He studied visual arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, design at the school of fine arts of Santiago and at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. After being the artistic director of Jacques Fath, he became designer for Guy Laroche. In 2006, he launched his own collection of textile accessories. His eponymous collection of ready-to-wear was created in 2011.
Sweden is home to a number of influential fashion brands with large international spread, ranging from more high-end contemporaries such as Acne Studios, J.Lindeberg, and Filippa K, as well as the global retail company H&M and its subsidiary brands like COS and & Other Stories. Sweden's capital, Stockholm, is the host of the country's biannual fashion week.
Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology was an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that showcased the dichotomy between Manus, also known as haute couture, and Machina, also known as prêt-à-porter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art debuted this exhibition during the 2016 Met Gala and ran it from May 5, 2016 to September 5, 2016. It included over 120 pieces from designers like Chanel and Christian Dior, varying from the 20th Century to present day.
Kristine Mary Crabb is a New Zealand fashion designer and artist. A prominent figure in New Zealand fashion, she is known for her Karangahape Road boutique Rip Shit and Bust which ran from 2001 to 2003, and for her fashion label Miss Crabb which ran from 2004 to 2019. In 2020 she launched Gloria, described by Crabb as a wide-ranging creative project.
