Fashion is the style and custom prevalent at a given time.

In its most common usage however,
"fashion" describes the popular clothing style.

Many fashions are popular in many cultures at any given time. Important is the idea that the course of design and fashion will change more rapidly than the culture as a whole. Fashion designers create and produce clothing articles.

The terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" were employed to describe whether someone or something fits in with the current or even not so current, popular mode of expression. However, more so in the modern era items termed 'not so current' may indeed fit into the term 'Retro.' Retro fashion allows rule shifts, such as 'old is suddenly new,' thus fashionable. The term "fashion" is frequently used in a positive sense, as a synonym for glamour, beauty and style^{[citation needed]}. In this sense, fashions are a sort of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty and goodness. The term "fashion" is also sometimes used in a negative sense, as a synonym for fads and trends, and materialism.

There exist a number of cities recognized as global fashion centers or fashion capitals. Fashion Weeks are held in these cities where designers exhibit their new clothing collections to audiences. The main five cities are Tokyo, London, Paris, Milan and New York - these five are renowned for their major influence on global fashion and are headquarters to the greatest fashion companies. Other cities, including Mumbai, Los Angeles, Seoul, Berlin, Rome, Osaka, Toronto, Hong Kong, Dubai, São Paulo, Sydney, Moscow,Madrid and Shanghai also hold fashion weeks and are better recognized every year.

Some historians observe the frequently changing clothing styles as a distinctively Western habit among urban populations.^{[dubious – discuss]} Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change (such as in ancient Rome), but then a long period without large changes followed. In 8th century Cordoba, Spain, Ziryab (a famous musician of that time) is said to have introduced sophisticated clothing styles based on seasonal and daily timings from his native Baghdad and his own inspiration.

The beginnings of the habit in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in styles can be fairly reliably dated to the middle of the 14th century, to which historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion in clothing.^[2][3] The most dramatic manifestation was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment, from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing on the chest to look bigger. This created the distinctive Western male outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.

The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women and men's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex and changing. Art historians are therefore able to use fashion in dating images with increasing confidence and precision, often within five years in the case of 15th century images. Initially changes in fashion led to a fragmentation of what had previously been very similar styles of dressing across the upper classes of Europe, and the development of distinctive national styles, which remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, finally those from Ancien Régime in France.^[3]:317-24 Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants following trends at a distance sometimes uncomfortably close for the elites - a factor Braudel regards as one of the main motors of changing fashion.^[3]:313-15 The fashions of the West are generally unparalleled either in antiquity or in the other great civilizations of the world. Early Western travellers, whether to Persia, Turkey, Japan or China frequently remark on the absence of changes in fashion there, and observers from these other cultures comment on the unseemly pace of Western fashion, which many felt suggested an instability and lack of order in Western culture. The Japanese Shogun's secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.^{[3]:312-3:323} However in Ming China, for example, there is considerable evidence for rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.^[4]

Ten 16th century portraits of German or Italian gentlemen may show ten entirely different hats, and at this period national differences were at their most pronounced, as Albrecht Dürer recorded in his actual or composite contrast of Nuremberg and Venetian fashions at the close of the 15th century (illustration, right). The "Spanish style" of the end of the century began the move back to synchronicity among upper-class Europeans, and after a struggle in the mid 17th century, French styles decisively took over leadership, a process completed in the 18th century.^[3]:317-21

Though colors and patterns of textiles changed from year to year,^[5] the cut of a gentleman's coat and the length of his waistcoat, or the pattern to which a lady's dress was cut changed more slowly. Men's fashions largely derived from military models, and changes in a European male silhouette are galvanized in theatres of European war, where gentleman officers had opportunities to make notes of foreign styles: an example is the "Steinkirk" cravat or necktie.

The pace of change picked up in the 1780s with the increased publication of French engravings that showed the latest Paris styles; though there had been distribution of dressed dolls from France as patterns since the 16th century, and Abraham Bosse had produced engravings of fashion from the 1620s. By 1800, all Western Europeans were dressing alike (or thought they were): local variation became first a sign of provincial culture, and then a badge of the conservative peasant.^[6]

Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the history of fashion design is normally taken to date from 1858, when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first true haute couture house in Paris. Since then the professional designer has become a progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions in street fashion.

Modern Westerners have a wide choice available in the selection of their clothes. What a person chooses to wear can reflect that person's personality or likes. When people who have cultural status start to wear new or different clothes a fashion trend may start. People who like or respect them may start to wear clothes of a similar style.

Fashions may vary considerably within a society according to age, social class, generation, occupation, and geography as well as over time. If, for example, an older person dresses according to the fashion of young people, he or she may look ridiculous in the eyes of both young and older people. The terms fashionista or fashion victim refer to someone who slavishly follows the current fashions.

One can regard the system of sporting various fashions as a fashion language incorporating various fashion statements using a grammar of fashion. (Compare some of the work of Roland Barthes.)

[edit] Media

An important part of fashion is fashion journalism. Editorial critique and commentary can be found in magazines, newspapers, on television, fashion websites, social networks and in fashion blogs.

At the beginning of the 21st century, fashion magazines began to include photographs and became even more influential than in the past. In cities throughout the world these magazines were greatly sought-after and had a profound effect on public taste. Talented illustrators drew exquisite fashion plates for the publications which covered the most recent developments in fashion and beauty. Perhaps the most famous of these magazines was La Gazette du Bon Ton which was founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel and regularly published until 1925 (with the exception of the war years).

Vogue, founded in the US in 1902, has been the longest-lasting and most successful of the hundreds of fashion magazines that have come and gone. Increasing affluence after World War II and, most importantly, the advent of cheap colour printing in the 1960s led to a huge boost in its sales, and heavy coverage of fashion in mainstream women's magazines - followed by men's magazines from the 1990s. Haute couture designers followed the trend by starting the ready-to-wear and perfume lines, heavily advertised in the magazines, that now dwarf their original couture businesses. Television coverage began in the 1950s with small fashion features. In the 1960s and 1970s, fashion segments on various entertainment shows became more frequent, and by the 1980s, dedicated fashion shows like FashionTelevision started to appear. Despite television and increasing internet coverage, including fashion blogs, press coverage remains the most important form of publicity in the eyes of the industry.

Fashion Editor, Sharon Mclellan said, "There's a misconception in the industry that TV, magazines and blogs dictate to the consumer, what to wear. But most trends aren't released to the public before consulting the target demographic. So what you see in the media is a result of research of popular ideas among the people. Essentially, fashion is a group of people bouncing ideas off of one another, like any other form of art." ^[7]

Media, social, political, and cultural influences have a significant effect on how fashion is viewed. In the United States in 2009, there was considerable interest and discussion in the media on the clothing choices of Michelle Obama, First Lady. The majority of articles praised her sense of fashion, irrespective of how her clothing selections fit within the larger realm of current trends in contemporary fashion. The political and cultural popularity of an individual can play a role equal or greater than artistic factors in how their sense of fashion is viewed by the media.^{[citation needed]}

Another genre of media that has become a vital influential fashion source has been the use of social media. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have proven to be beneficial to fashion houses in garnering momentum for their high-end fashion lines. Social networking has been particularly significant during the infamous Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (formerly known as New York Fashion Week), as A-list celebrities and fashion designers post the latest updates to their followers from under the tents in the historical Bryant Park. Fashion brands are further enlisting assistance in the world of immediacy and networking by launching social sites specifically geared to promoting their products. Burberry will launch its social media savvy site, artofthetrench.com in October 2009.

[edit] Intellectual property

Within the fashion industry, intellectual property is not enforced as it is within the film industry and music industry. To "take inspiration" from others' designs contributes to the fashion industry's ability to establish clothing trends. Enticing consumers to buy clothing by establishing new trends is, some have argued, a key component of the industry's success. Intellectual property rules that interfere with the process of trend-making would, on this view, be counter-productive.

In 2005, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a conference calling for stricter intellectual property enforcement within the fashion industry to better protect small and medium businesses and promote competitiveness within the textile and clothing industries.^[8][9]

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fashion

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[edit] References