What is fashion?

 Fashion is the reflection of an era, a country, a culture, or a population. Whether they are clothing, artistic, musical, decorative, aesthetic, political, linguistic, sporting, or geographic… fashions are made and unmade, exclude or embrace, affect all backgrounds and all areas. We can love it, run away from it, seek it out, despise it… But what are we talking about, where does it come from and what is it for?

What is fashion?

When we think of fashion, we have in mind the clothing industry, luxury goods, cosmetics, brands that create and develop accessories to embellish the look… Fashion is also a means of asserting one's social standing, his purchasing power, or his personality.

Three " Léa " in class, all on vacation in the Dominican Republic or even " yo man " to say " hello " ... Fashion creates changes that are renewed regularly as well, two, three, four times a year, in the case of sartorial fashion with successive collections. Another peculiarity of fashion is that instead of adding new elements, it tends to remix them. For example, OMI's 2015 summer hit - “ Cheerleader ” is actually an older track, remixed by a “ trendy ” DJ .

Where does fashion come from?

While those who create fashion are often artists or designers, everyone may feel like they want to start one. We all have a creative part in us… Fashion is defended by critics and by all those it touches who become its ambassadors… Here too, we can be impacted, as long as we want to because follow fashion it's not mandatory…

Difficult to say when it dates back, difficult to imagine if prehistoric men chatted about the last fashionable animal skin ... It seems however that it is in Antiquity that we find the first fashion phenomena such as us know it today. It was in the Middle Ages, thanks for example to the commercial opening of the Silk Road, that the meeting of other civilizations allowed the rise of fashion.

How does a sartorial fashion come about?

Fashion is based on the power of the “ brand ” of those who transform inert objects, raw materials such as fabric into magical objects, bearers of meaning represented by a color, a shape or a logo. Fashion can also be born without reason or precise origin. It occurs at a certain period because the conditions are right for it to appear. If its origin is often difficult to detect, the one explaining the reason for its disappearance is often just as mysterious.

What is the meaning of fashion?

Fashion is a way of living, of thinking, specific to an era, a country, an environment. It is often seen as superficial or even as a way of selling products that the consumer (therefore you) may feel compelled to buy " because it's fashionable ". Fashion makes it possible to bring together individuals who will pursue the same desires or make the same choices. It conveys values ​​such as change, the ephemeral, the new, the modern, the latest, the original, the highly publicized, elitism, luxury ...

Fashion is an economic activity because it produces objects, but it is also an artistic activity because it produces symbols. So she doesn't just transform fabric into clothes, she creates objects that have meaning for those who wear them.

What does it represent?

The fashion and luxury industry is a major economic activity. This industry represents nearly 6% of world consumption in all sectors, with 1,400 billion euros in 2008. By comparison, the automotive sector accounts for just under 4% of world consumption.

Who is it for ?

We follow fashion to signal our belonging to a social GROUP, a group of thought, a form of aestheticism, to distinguish ourselves from others; therefore to signal its originality, its refusals, its social and political rejections ... Fashion brings people together and reassures. But we can also be fashionable with conformism.