A history of fashion: regency era to modern day

A history of fashion: Regency era to modern day

Properly dressed ladies wore spencers (long-sleeved jackets cut beneath the bosom) or pelisses (long-sleeved jackets cut three-quarters down the length of a skirt) out of doors, along with a broad-brimmed hat tied under the chin with a ribbon.

Following the trend of women's fashions, men in the Regency era were dressed more soberly than their predecessors. The richly colored, brocaded suits were replaced by plain, dark cutaway coats which were especially practical for horsemanship. Knee breeches, stockings and buckled shoes gave way to pantaloons tucked into high riding boots. Finally, the powdered wigs of the Georgian era were forever relegated from fashion, as men of the period began wearing their hair short and natural[8].

Victorian Fashions

During the Victorian era, the precise cut, material and color of a garment revealed the social class of the wearer. With the growing prosperity of the day, fashions for women of the higher classes became increasingly complex. Dresses were composed of several layers of different shades, cloths and trimmings, and intended to be worn with both under-dresses and over-dresses. Properly dressed ladies accessorized with gloves and bonnets. Bustlines rose, as Victorian modesty gained widespread adherence; and waistlines fell as designers revived the popularity of formal dresses reminiscent of Georgian France. In the first quarter-century, puffy "mutton-leg" sleeves became all the rage, but these were later replaced by fitted sleeves and eventually bell sleeves. Victorians considered the "hourglass" shape to best flatter the female form, and women wore restrictive corsets to achieve this ideal. The Victorian era also saw the progression from crinoline skirts to hoop skirts and finally to bustled skirts. Finally, the invention of sewing machine revolutionized women's fashion on a practical level, as ladies devoted themselves to designing, customizing and making their own garments.

As for accessories of this era, the cameo became all the rage of the mid-19th century. Although Queen Elizabeth was known to favor cameos to complement her garments and Catherine the Great had an impressive collection as well, Queen Victoria revived the jewelry piece during her reign. Cameos during the Victorian era were often attached to a black velvet ribbon and worn as a choker. Jewelers during the nineteenth century used gemstones, stone, shell, lava, coral and manmade materials as mediums to carve cameos. Shell had been used by Italian carvers since 1805, and by the Victorian era, was the favorite material of cameo designers. Popular subjects for cameos included depictions of deities from Greek mythology (especially the Three Graces, the daughters of Zeus), the Biblical Rebecca at the well, and the Bacchante maidens adorned with grape leaves in their hair. The Victorians' appreciation for naturalism, especially their love of gardening, was also captured in cameos featuring flowers and trees. Finally, the Victorian woman of means often commissioned a cameo in her likeness, while other artists depicted an idealized woman with an upswept hairstyle and Romanesque features.

Men's fashions of the era were comparably more comfortable for the wearer. It was considered impolite society for a gentleman to appear in his shirt sleeves before a lady other than his wife, so Victorian men nearly always wore an informal "sack coat" during the day. The sack coat was a loose-fitting, single-breasted garment appropriate for travel or business, which was distinctive for its small collar, short lapels, a fastened top button close to the neck, moderately rounded hems, flap or welt pockets on the hips, a welt pocket on the chest and a slightly baggy appearance. Men's formal attire consisted of a top hat, dapper cutaway coat or frockcoat, waistcoat, cravat and trousers[6].

Edwardian Fashions

At the advent of the Edwardian era, the shape of women's fashions transitioned from the popular "hourglass" figure to dresses designed with an "S" curve. The new style allowed women to cast away the confining corsets of the Victorian age and embrace the new "health corsets" that supported the spine and abdomen. The curvaceous clothing line of this period resounded with the curving lines of Art Nouveau style. In addition, ladies' hats became larger, a trend that continued steadily until 1911. The Art Nouveau style also invaded women's jewelry styles, as peacocks, dragonflies and moths created out of dazzling enamels and gold filigree became standard adornments for ladies' combs and brooches.

Throughout the Edwardian period, women's fashions were highly influenced by the advancing feminist Suffrage movement. Women modeled their behavior and appearance upon the "Gibson Girl", the popular image of the "New Woman". Designers soon borrowed from men's clothing styles such as the suit, shirt, hard collar and tie, to create fashions appropriate for women entering professions formerly occupied by men.

During the later half of the Edwardian era, fashions once again transitioned from the "S" curve dresses to the pre-flapper, straight-line clothing of the late 1910s. As women began participating in athletics, casual and comfortable "sport clothing" also became popular. Women's fashions also generally became lighter in construction and materials, as epitomized by the "lingerie dress", a feather-light white cotton dress inset with strips of open-work lace and net. In sum, women's fashions became progressively more comfortable, practical and aesthetically pleasing during this era, such that the period from 1890 to 1914 is remembered as "la Belle Epoque" ("The Beautiful Epoch")[9].

Modern Trends of Fashion Design

Fashion is closely related with trend and requires the understanding of socio–cultural trends. Fashion is a field of cultural pluralism in which differences coexist. This specific field seems to show new praxis and methodologies in which businesses are able to continuously innovate products according to social and cultural changes. All these theories are expressions of deep changes that influenced fashion during the 19th century. Born as a craft sector in the late 1880 in France, fashion, in the modern sense, was in the beginning a way to establish status and

class differentiation for small elites. Not until the end of 1960, that the social disorder and the contestation of bourgeois values have an important impact in the fashion sector: for the first time styles and taste from lower levels of society became dominant. In the late 70s, research for affordable and simple ways of dressing began the transformation of the sector from craft production to industrial production. This change was promoted by Italian companies, which at the time were already producing textile fabrics and knitwear and began collaborating with young designers, such as Armani and Versace. Since then, fashion began to lose its powerful "status" connotation to assume the role of "social" and "cultural" connotation (Bertola, 2001). Fashion is more and more related to cultural communities and to a plurality of life styles and behaviors. It is also often characterized by “fashions” which spread with a bottom up mechanism and start in the lower level of society (King 1981; Naisbit 1990; Morace 1996; Lopiano Misdo and De Luca, 1997).

Fashion Business in Italy & Trend Process

Italy was selected as the leader in fashion for this research in the trend process because Italian fashion is for everyone in society, and is not as exclusive as French fashion. Italian fashion, thus, is more rooted in cultural values and is more strongly associated with the trend process. In Italy, clothes and accessories related to an idea of aesthetic quality, functionality and comfort, constructing a modern and new environment for informal social interaction. While France focused on the idea of luxury and distinction, Italian fashion has been characterized from the beginning as an expression of a contemporary style, generally affordable and close to different social groups (Anderson Black and Garland 1975; Steel 1988; Testa and Savoiolo 2000). On the side of production, this leads Italian fashion to become an industrial sector able to produce massive quantities of products, while French fashion remains based on craft production characterized by sophisticated and expensive processes to guarantee high quality and personalized products (Burns and Bryant 1997).

From beginning, Italian designers had the ability to understand needs and meaning, embedding them into products to share values and culture in a local context. They designed for a niche market; a local cultural community. Later, during the 90s, deep changes in society occurred. Conditions such as the globalized market, people migrations, the capillary diffusion of communication means, influenced the way in which social communities became localized and diffused (Toffler 1990). Italian design began to change, trying to become an expression of a cultural global plurality, which today characterizes fashion (Davis 1992).

Corresponding to these changes in the 90s, organizations transformed their implicit sensitivity to the market into a structured process of understanding cultural evolution and the potentialities of "bottom-up" phenomena. This new process is related to all the activities, which occur before product development. The result of their process is usually a document using visual language to express a vision of potential evolution in culture, life styles and behaviors. This special activity is the starting point of a standard trend tracking and visualizing service. The trend process was continually developed, then speeds up through the driving forces of high competition, complex market segments, and advancement in technology in order to quickly collect and understand target user information. This led to high efficiency in using the information to embed user values in products and innovate according to social and cultural trends.

Fashion Business in Thailand & Trend Process

Thailand was selected as a follower in fashion in this research because it has been a manufacturing country with one of the highest exports in clothing. Since the rise of cheaper Chinese labor, the Thai government has been promoting the trend process to make Thailand more competitive in the global market.

The fashion business and industry in Thailand are different from those of Italy and France in that designers and manufacturers lack cooperation. In the case of in-house designers, when a designer proposes a new product different from the mainstream, manufacturers do not recognize nor support the significance of design novelty. Designer-owned brands also face a similar problem when the manufacturer refuses to do small orders, or if the design consists of details that have never been done before. This results in very high prices for products with distinctive design, mainly in a niche market as most consumers cannot afford them. Many “risk-free” manufacturers are more interested in copying already successful products. As they are mass-produced, the prices become lower, and also more affordable as well as popular for most domestic consumers.

In the west, the socio-cultural movement is the driving influence on consumer perception, lifestyle, and in fashion. On the contrary, consumers in Thailand accept any new trend without relating to any socio-cultural issue. In reverse, the mainstream trends influence consequent socio-cultural reactions (Cholachatpinyo 2003).

Nonetheless, the garment manufacturing and export industry of Thailand was one of the main revenues of the country in the beginning. Consumer preferences were not previously given importance as with other factors in manufacturing. Presently, the government’s policy is promoting the creation of value-added products more than OEM. Trend information, thus becomes a necessity in product planning and development for export. In 1994, the Department of Export Promotion, Ministry of Commerce began distributing awareness of trends for targeted export markets in other countries. Thereafter, the DEP held trade fairs to exhibit Thai design and production capabilities, including how Thai products go along or fit into some specific international trends.

Today, besides distributing trend awareness in the fashion industry, the Thai government also gives importance to a Thai identity or uniqueness for export products to compete globally. However, there are still obstacles in utilizing trend information in Thailand, as those in charge of design are often more like prototype makers or factory owners. The expectation for trend information is more a question of what style, color, or form to be made to minimize risks, not to understand the origins of trends in order to expand creativity.

Design organizations with a high sensitivity to new trends do not rely on secondary trend information; they always virtually and realistically travel and gain experience from foreign locales in orders to absorb new trends and new inspiration. With this level of personal and organizational capability, new trends can be also identified early on. Some of the leading fashion brands keep track of trend information in order to understand fashion movement, not to fully apply that information to their design, in order to exclude themselves from the mainstream players. However, the difference between Thai and Italian design organizations is that the Italians work closely with suppliers to develop specific materials to fit right into the new trend during their product development, while Thais rarely have such cooperation.

Early and medium trend follower

In Italy, the design organization uses trend resources as a major information supply. Traditionally, the success relies upon sensible and profound interpretation of the readers, common to most Italian design organizations. In Thailand, in contrast, where the affordability of this trend resource is comparatively low, there are only a few companies who have access to it. Therefore, only few individuals have a chance to develop such processes. However, since successful trend application depends on such skills mentioned, Thais seem to not fully benefit from this open-to-all-interpretation trend resource, provided mostly by the government, as they lack the skills to understand the meaning that the trends suggest and the evolution of the past to present and future trends.

The emerging trend in Italy is a workshop held between trend institutes and their clients in order to efficiently apply trend information to their products during the product development stage. Compared with Italy, the Thai government’s organizations, such as the Department of Export Promotion and Thailand Creative and Design Center, will provide trend seminars about the current trend information to public. Short individual sessions of consultation about how they can apply the trend information to their products and other issues about product development of each design company will sometimes be arranged. However, limitations of time and budget makes it much less effective than the cooperative workshop done in Italy.

Late trend followers

The late trend followers usually have superficial understanding about the mechanism of trend information, even less in how that information could efficiently be applied to their products. Without considering the cause and effect of socio-cultural factors that drive those trends, form and colors proposed in either fashion magazine or fashion shows for the coming season are always far more than the important elements that they pay attention to in order to directly adopt it to fit their own brand identity and products. Since they do not fully understand the evolution of trends, the next trend is always a myth that therefore needs prediction rather than investigation and analysis that can be done by them.

Specializations in fashion designing have come into being. There is a wide range of options for a designer to choose from, such as lingerie, swimwear, women's wear, bridal wear, children's wear, men's wear, footwear, handbags, etc.

Another significant change that has come about in the fashion designing industry in recent times is the increased use of computers and technology. A number of software packages have come up to aid designers in the process of designing as well as other stages in the production of a garment, easily and speedily. Fashion designing as a trade has also grown. Fashion designers have gone on to get repute not only in their own countries, but internationally as well. The number of fashion shows and participation in the same has gone up considerably in recent times. Fashion designing is thus no longer only the designing and creation of a garment, but it is a world in itself involving fashion, design, creativity, technology as well as business.[12]

The type of clothing completely depends on the person who is wearing it; therefore it becomes a reflection of his perception of himself, which leads us to the term – personal identity. Lately a lot is being heard about personal identity and its meaning in the life of every single person on the planet. The choice of clothing and accessories (clothing that is worn or carried, but not part of a person’s main clothing) is as important as identification through the color of hair, height, skin and gender. Clothing nowadays is a media of information about the person wearing it [Barnard 21]. It is a cipher; a code that needs a decryption in order to understand what kind of person is underneath it. The present time offers a great variety of these “ciphers” and therefore gives people a large number of opportunities to reveal their identity. As every cloth carries a strong message about its owner, every owner “nests” a certain value in it depending on his temperament, mindset or today’s mood. Therefore, the clothing of a person is a mean of communication with the outside world. It is the way of telling people about the “state” and the “status” of it owner [Barnes& Eicher 125].