High end fashion is the most highly desired, most notorious and most expensive fashion. Another way that it can be defined is that it has a higher purpose that makes it technically advanced and widely admired among sophisticated end users as well as peers and colleagues.
It is a sophisticated world of designers with renowned reputations who have the wherewithal and talent to set the pace consistently in the whirlwind industry of the most recent clothing, accessories, and lifestyles that go with them.
Names like Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Christian Dior, Tom Ford, Givenchy, Georgio Armani, Versace, Chanel, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and others light up the fashion headlines as the sophisticated and wealthy members of society revel in their most recent designs.
Political leaders and Hollywood celebrities display the most recent fashions with their lifestyles and public appearances. High-end fashion has a definite place with the rich and famous. It shows a display of nouveau nobility and sense of refinement.
Fashion design is often described as being the art of applying the design of accessories and clothing to bring about pleasing effects and natural beauty through creative and innovative functionality.
Fashion designers are extremely creative individuals and must be able to anticipate future market attitudes and trends due to how long it takes to get new creations designed and introduced into the market. Designers also need to be able to anticipate who will wear their creations and what their purposes will be. The most gifted designers are the ones who set the trends due to their reputations and abilities.
Fashion design as an art form has been said to start with the designer Charles Frederick Worth. During the 1800s, he was the first designer to have his label displayed in his garments. His designs became widely renowned to the point he was able to dictate what clothes his customers wore.
At that point in time, most of what was considered to be fashion merely copied what was being worn at the time by the Royal Family. Frederick Worth’s rising fame brought designers into higher demand and they started hiring artists to draw out their newest designs for the public to see.
High end fashion today is still that of the Haute Couture. One garment is made specifically for one individual. We have seen this done in Hollywood when a celebrity needs to have a design for something to wear to the Oscars Awards. Or maybe the First Lady needs to have a gown designed to wear to the Inaugural Ball. The look and effect are important factors and the design house doesn’t make a huge profit.
Ready to wear fashion is a branch taken from Haute Coutre. It takes a limited number of clothing items from a high-fashion piece to create something more widely available. However, there is great care taken by the manufacturer to ensure that exclusivity is created and they are presented and shown to the public as “in season” and the most recent style.
Fashion makes very important exclusive statements about society and the way it views itself based on what it is surrounded by and what is going on at the moment. Compared to the average man it might border on the unreal at times, however, it can provide the common man with inspiration and ideas that he can work towards attaining.