1 Comment Written by Anders on May 26, 2008 – 1:29 am

Fashion design is a relatively new category, marking the shift from the dominance of French haute couture in the 1950s to new fashion centers in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Youth, street styles, and pop culture have become increasingly central to fashion design, economics, and media presence.

As early as the fifteenth century, la mode (Latin: modus = rule; manner, mode, way, method) in France implied the “custom, fashion, manner, and way in which one dresses or makes oneself beautiful; in short, everything to do with attire and splendor” (Diderot 1713–1784). Yet the word fashion was not integrated into the English language until the mid-sixteenth century.

It derives from the French faÅon (workmanship, way of doing something, mannerisms) but took on connotations of “the made” in addition to “custom” or “disposition.” FaÅon is etymologically related to “fetish” and also to “faction” (political party, or section) as a symbolic representation of a political ethos. In France, “à la mode” meant someone who wore courtly, worldly clothing, signifying the imperial authority to exercise absolute power.

Louis XIV, as a ruler à la mode, established France as the European center of fashion, and by the second half of the seventeenth century, monthly shipments of the latest, greatest, stately fashions were being sent to the grande and not quite so grande dames of London, and later to those in Germany, Italy, and Russia.

Magazines as a means of distributing descriptions and pictures of fashionable clothing and accessories began with the Mercure in 1692. This was available in France, England, and Germany, and the Journal des Luxus und der Moden (The journal of luxury and fashion) began publishing everything related to intellectual, social, and domestic fashions in 1786. Nevertheless, from the 1620s onward there was an active critique of fashion and the fashionable.

German semantics combined the French phrase à la mode with social criticism in the phrase a-la modische Kleiderteufel (fashionable little devil) (Grimm, Deutsches Wçrterbuch, 1854). This was directed not only against the French hegemony of absolute aristocracy and the prevalence of French attire in German lands; it also mocked the frenchified “clothes devil” to assert the moral (and nationalist) superiority of the world of (German) bourgeois reality over (French) aristocratic appearances. The French Revolution started a lively dialectical relationship between fashion and anti-fashion or even protest fashion as an attempt to negotiate the antagonism of modern class, race, and gender systems.

The relationship between fashion and modernity formed part of the new erait created a dynamic relationship with time, because the French word moderne meant “consistent with contemporary fashion, faÅon, attire, mannerisms” (Grimm 1854). As an indicator of this, fashion became an aesthetic imperative: “whoever and whatever does not comply with fashion should be ashamed” (Grimm 1854).

In fact, the more articulately the political anatomy of nineteenth-century modernity clothed the male body and its economics with the uniform of the suithelping of course to separate the men from the dandiesthe more fashion became a symbol of the elite, of the superficial, and a synonym for the feminine.

The discourse on fashion’s naturalness or artificiality is still a part of the biopolitical debate. The “aesthetic movement” and those who identified with the artistic and intellectual avant-garde at the end of the nineteenth century opposed fashion and advocated naturalism, “rational” clothing and the removal of corsets. Clothing in support of this position was designed by feminists such as Amelia Bloomer, doctors like Heinrich Pudor, artists such as William Morris Edward Burne-Jones, and Henry van de Velde (Deutscher Werkbund), stage actress Anna Muthesius, and writer Oscar Wilde.

The idea that the body should no longer conform to the artificial and unhealthy demands of fashion but should be allowed its own natural shape formed the basis for the twentieth-century biopolitical movement that placed the body at the center of fashion, in turn paving the way for body fashion, which became the heart of a global economic sector embracing nutrition, sport, cosmetics, and more recently, cosmetic surgery. Around 1900, this created a new synthesis of art and fashion, the first that approached the category of design, in the form of a modern, industrially manufactured clothing industry.

Educational institutions were established in London, Vienna, Berlin, and New York where the Chase School (now Parsons The New School for Design) in 1906 was the first to offer a course in fashion design. However, Parisian haute couture continued to dominate fashion well into the first half of the twentieth century, as prÞt-à-porter, or ready to wear, clothing became popular.

Charles Frederick Worth’s (1825–1895) annual collection was the first to earn its designer the title of “couturier,” which had previously only existed in the feminine form, meaning seamstress. Because he signed his creations, Worth awarded himself the status of artist. He succeeded in turning his name into a product, similar to the modern concept of branding, and clothed queens, ladies of the bourgeoisie, famous actresses, and other grande dames of modern haute couture. Yet, it was Paul Poiret (1879–1944) who first picked up on the clothing reform with his “La Vague” and culottes creations. Haute couture at that time drew inspiration from art, theater, the opera, and ballet.

Poiret designed clothing for the stage as well, and worked with professional models. In 1914, Jeanne Paquin (1869–1936) held the first fashion show in London, presenting her line of tango dresses. Poiret developed a range of products including his own perfume, accessories, and interior furnishings. In the 1920s and 1930s, women such as Coco Chanel (1883–1971), Madeleine Vionnet (1876–1956), Alix Gres (1899–1993), and Maggy Rouff (1876–1971) dominated haute couture.

Popular culture also focused on women in motion: in the workforce, playing sports, doing the Charleston, at dance revues, in films, and shopping. A broad spectrum of gender subversions, from the garÅon or flapper style to the vamp or diva look, was typical of women’s fashion at the time.

Crossdressing by wearing pants or suits shifted gender borders even further. Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) experimented with readymades and, along with Marcel Duchamp, worked closely with the art and intellectual avant-garde scene. Her styling helped make stars out of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mae West, and her other customers included Katherine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Fashion and cosmetics have always been essential in the film industry and the making of stars and, accordingly, its influence on daily fashion is immense.

Yet Hollywood fashion trends, which were sold in American department stores after the release of films, evoked costume directors and cosmetic companies. French couturiers, like Louis Feraud or Hubert de Givenchy, who designed for Audrey Hepburn, first began to work consistently in the film industry during the 1950s.

America took on the leading role in fashion during the Second World War. A distinctively American fashion style developed in the 1940s, dominated by sportswear that was exported to Europe after the war, as well as blue jeans and the image of the American teenager. Christian Dior’s “New Look” in 1947 was a new beginning for haute couture and marked a transition to a more accelerated turnover of fashion lines, the end of the French eraand the beginnings of “fashion design” as we understand the term today. London’s new academies began educating young fashion designers who ignored established couturiers such as Hardy Amies (1909–2003) or Norman Hartwell (1901–1979). In the 1950s, a new structure of fashion started to emerge from the interplay of sub-cultural street styles, pop culture, art, and design.

During this period, fashion became part of the creative industries and sub-culture styleslike those of the mid-1950s Teddy Boys who mixed retro-Edwardian detailing like velvet and ruffles with American rock and roll attitudewere absorbed by mass-produced, mainstream prÞt-à-porter clothing. Street styles from different cultures ranging from the Teddy Boys, Rockers, Mods, Hippies, Punks, and Skins to the New Romantics became closely identified with designers such as Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, and Alexander McQueen. Quant’s miniskirt adapted and shortened a creation by couturier Andre Courr ›ges, who originally designed it in 1964 in line with Bauhaus principles.

In style, as a medium of symbolic communication, the postproduction boundaries between wearer and designer start to blur because both the designer and the wearer create fashion by selecting, sampling, and reinterpreting historical, social, cultural, and gender images and/or objects. Street styles are also hybrids since they create a mix of white, black, Asian, Indian, or Caribbean youth cultures. The flower power generation of the 1960s not only made a trend out of second-hand clothing; it also challenged bourgeois sexuality and its representation of masculinity. Punk fetish clothing by Westwood and McLaren offered a queer statement about the deconstruction of bourgeois heterosexuality.

Camp extravagance has been popular in the club scene since the 1970s. Stars like Freddie Mercury were styled by glam-rock designer Zandra Rhodes, and David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust with the help of stylist Freddie Burretti. Queer aesthetics pervade fashion from Jean Paul Gaultier to the Antwerp Six, and were introduced to the mainstream in the 1990s with the style of the “metrosexual” man. This is part of a particular economy beginning in the 1980s where brands dominated the fashion scene and the focus was not only on stars, but also on minorities and youth rebels.

The post-subculture styles of the 1990s are characterized by their close commercial involvement with different historical youth culture styles, and by the New Tribalism body modifications of tattoos and piercings. Hip-hop, as a black style that was characterized by the subversive appropriation of luxury items and brands (bling) associated with the white middle classes, generated further youth cultures that deliberately styled themselves using replica luxury brands. Italian and American designers are mainly responsible for jeans and sportswear and have established most of today’s brand corporations: Gucci, Prada, Armani, Versace, D&G, CK, Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Donna Karan.

Since the late 1970s, Japanese fashion designers have increasingly won recognition on the fashion scene: Kenzo, Issey Miyake, and Yoshi Yamamoto. The founder of Comme des GarÅons, Rei Kawakubo, clearly challenged the architecture of the Western body in 1997 with her “body meets dress” collection. Digital media technology has enabled new possibilities for designing wearable computing and, in the form of body scans and virtual try-ons, has provided new means of presenting and producing fashion.

For example, mass customization has enabled clothing to be custom tailored and fitted using individualized blueprint techniques. Even gene technology and life sciences have altered the materiality of fashion. Nanofibers, bacteria, and stem-cell cultures are beginning to define innovative structures for future fashion design.