Fashion designers

                          

    Fashion designers work in a variety of ways when designing their pieces and accessories such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and clothes. Due to the time required to put a garment out on the market, designers must anticipate changes to consumer desires. Fashion designers are responsible for creating looks for individual garments, involving shape, color, fabric, trimming, and more.

Fashion designers attempt to design clothes that are functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. They consider who is likely to wear a garment and the situations in which it will be worn, and they work with a wide range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles. Though most clothing worn for everyday wear falls within a narrow range of conventional styles, unusual garments are usually sought for special occasions such as evening wear or party dresses.

Some clothes are made specifically for an individual, as in the case of haute couture or bespoke tailoring. Today, most clothing is designed for the mass market, especially casual and everyday wear, which are commonly known as ready to wear or fast fashion.

Fashion in India

                                      

The history of clothing in India dates back to ancient times, yet fashion is a new industry, as it was the traditional Indian clothing with regional variations, be it the sari, ghagra choli or dhoti, that remained popular until the early decades of post-independence India.[1] A common form of Indian fashion originates from Western culture. Fashion includes a series of sequins and gold thread to attract customers and apply a statement to the Indian fashion community. A famous Indian fashion trademark is embroidery, an art of sewing distinct thread patterns. A way to include the traditional look and create a new fashion statement includes embroidery applied to different dresses, skirts, shirts, and pants to reflect the western culture influence as well as include the Indian tradition.

As part of larger revival movement in the Indian textile industry, Ritu Kumar, a Kolkata-based designer and textile print-expert started working on reviving the traditional hand block printing techniques of Bengal, and making it a part of the fashion industry, established "ethnic chic". She opened her first boutique in Delhi in 1966. In 1973, she first showcased the Zardozi embroidery in her garments, which had its origins in the royal costumes dating back to the Mughal era. This led to the revival of this lost art. In time embroidery became a prominent feature of Indian wedding attire, and also one of the country's biggest fashion exports.This was a period of revival, where various organisations, NGOs and individuals were involved in reviving traditional Indian techniques, in weaving, printing, dyeing or embroidery, including ikat, patola (double-ikat), bandhani (tie-dye) and shisha (mirror embroidery).

An early trendsetter in fashion was Bollywood (Hindi cinema), where costume designers like Bhanu Athaiya started experimenting with film fashion in the 1960s. Athaiya started working on period costumes in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962) and Amrapali (1966), though she went on to introduce varied trends through Teesri Manzil (1966), Chalte Chalte (1976), Karz (1980) and Chandni (1989). These were soon followed by the mass market. Also situations and themes in Indian cinema became westernised, making way for the display of diverse fashion. Over the years, popular Bollywood trends have been the Madhubala's Anarkali-look with kurtas and churidars in Mughal-e-Azam (1960), purple embroidered sari worn by Madhuri Dixit in Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! (1994), to Rani Mukherji's short kurti-suits in Bunty Aur Babli (2005), and chiffon sarees and trench coats in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), Veer Zaara suits and blouses from Parineeta. This comes besides various fashion interpretations of the sari in films like Chandni (1989) with Sridevi, Main Hoon Na (2004) with Sushmita Sen and Dostana (2008) with Priyanka Chopra, which became fashion trends.

However, in recent decades, with increasing exposure to the West, its influence is no longer as strong as in previous decades.By the 2000s, with rise in the Indian diaspora around the world and the non-resident Indians, Bollywood continues to exert far greater influence on the fashion sensibilities amongst Indians around the world.

History of fashion

 Changes in clothing often took place at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, followed by a long period without significant changes. In eighth-century Moorish Spain, the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdobaunreliable source sophisticated clothing styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his inspiration. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.                

Alleged Western distinctiveness

Lina Cavalieri an opera singer and a model, becoming a muse for several notable artists and photographers.

Early Western travellers who visited India, Persia, Turkey, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion in those countries. In 1609, the secretary of the Japanese shōgun bragged inaccurately to a Spanish visitor that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.However, these conceptions of non-Western clothing undergoing little, if any, evolution are generally held to be untrue; for instance, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing.In imperial China, clothing were not only an embodiment of freedom and comfort or used to cover the body or protect against the cold or used for decorative purposes; it was also regulated by strong sumptuary laws which was based on strict social hierarchy system and the ritual system of the Chinese society. It was expected for people to be dressed accordingly to their gender, social status and occupation; the Chinese clothing system had cleared evolution and varied in appearance in each period of history.  However, ancient Chinese fashion, like in other cultures, was an indicator of the socioeconomic conditions of its population; for Confucian scholars, however, changing fashion was often associated with social disorder which was brought by rapid commercialization.   Clothing which experienced fast changing fashion in ancient China was recorded in ancient Chinese texts, where it was sometimes referred as shiyang, "contemporary-styles", and was associated with the concept of fuyao, "outrageous dress" which typically holds a negative connotation. Similar changes in clothing can be seen in Japanese clothing between the Genroku period and the later centuries of the Edo period (1603–1867), during which a time clothing trends switched from flashy and expensive displays of wealth to subdued and subverted ones.

Fashion

                             

        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 (styles and trends) as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.

The term 'fashion' originates from the Latin word 'Facere,' which means 'to make,' and describes the manufacturing, mixing, and wearing of outfits adorned with specific cultural aesthetics, patterns, motifs, shapes, and cuts, allowing people to showcase their group belonging, values, meanings, beliefs, and ways of life. Given the rise in mass production of commodities and clothing at lower prices and global reach, reducing fashion's environmental impact and improving sustainability has become an urgent issue among politicians, brands, and consumers.