The Fashion Cycle, or Trend Cycle, helps us trace a garment’s journey from ‘in’ to ‘out’ of fashion. It’s a idea most would be familiar with, even those who don’t maintain a particular interest in fashion, since it presents a framework for looking at the economics of the fashion system as a whole, encompassing high to low.
The term ‘unisex’, rather fittingly, was coined in the Sixties. Prefixing ‘sex’ with ‘uni–‘ (meaning ‘one’) in the context of fashion refers to a single garment or aesthetic that is shared by both sexes. It suggests that a garment or hairstyle is not engendered and can be worn by either sex without connotations of masculine or feminine.
The dress she would wear was laying out on the bed. Hazel and Etta had both been good about lending her their best clothes – considering that they weren’t supposed to come to the party. There was Etta’s long blue crêpe de chine evening dress and some white pumps and a rhinestone tiara for her hair. These clothes were really gorgeous. It was hard to imagine how she would look in them.
Jeans are one of the most powerful clothing icons of the twentieth-century. Famously named after the French town of Nîmes where the characteristic twill that forms the denim fabric originated, the etymological origin of the word is surprisingly literal: the simplification of the phrasing ‘de Nîmes’ into a single noun.
The word ‘collar’ presents a sort of curt simplicity that seems to fit its form and function as an object of dress. Thought to originate around 1300, the term originates from the old French ‘coler’, referring to the neck, which formed from the Latin term ‘collum’ having a similar meaning.
“Take it off, Carrie. We’ll go down and burn it in the incinerator together, and then pray for forgiveness. We’ll do penance.” Her eyes began to sparkle with the strange, disconnected zeal that came over her at events which she considered to be tests of faith. “I’ll stay home from work and you’ll stay home from school. We’ll pray. We’ll ask for a Sign. We’ll get us down on our knees and ask for the Pentecostal Fire.”
Giacomo Leopardi and the Thin Veil Between Fashion and Mortality
The Romantic poem ‘Dialogue Between Fashion and Death’ is curious and resonating work that deals with the powerful connection between dress and mortality. The piece presents ‘Fashion’ as a fictional character in conversation with ‘Death’, that is, like Death, actively responsible for human suffering.
Released in 1874, the same year of its demise, Mallarmé’s La Dernière Mode, is a magazine/art project/journal on fashion that has come to be regarded as one of the most important publications in fashion academia and literature, and indeed our critical understanding of fashion today.
Fashion’s love affair with architecture is, at least at face value, an aspirational one, the academic tendencies of architectural discourse lend authenticity to fashion, which is traditionally perceived as trivial, and changeable in contrast to the sheer solidity of an architectural structure.
The creative marriage between James Dyson and Issey Miyake Design Studio has given birth to a series of projects between the two companies which began when Fujiwara invited Dyson to work on the Issey Miyake spring/summer 2006 collection.
In 1997 choreographer Merce Cunningham invited fashion designer Rei Kawakubo to work with him on a dance piece, the result was ‘Scenario’ which premiered in October of that year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.
Founded in 1929 by radiologist Alfred Jordan, along with a collection of eugenicists, the Men’s Dress Reform Group was formed with the intention of furthering the human race through men’s dress and correcting its various physical and social constraints by addressing the health concerns of highly tailored and un-washable men’s dress of the time, as well as outlining aesthetic reform, that attempted to further the beauty of men.