Fashion Design: Learning the Basics of Fashion

Ever wanted to be privy to the fashion world's main players? Want to talk the talk and walk the walk? Ever wondered what fashion experts are referring to when they talk about the haute couture? This article is your guide to basic fashion jargon.

Fashion design is the applied art of clothing design and creating accessories to go with the clothes. Fashion designers are professionals in this area; they create the clothing lines that go into fashion week and determine what's in for a particular season and which clothes are completely passé.

There are three main types of fashion designs: haute couture, ready-to-wear and mass market.

Haute Couture: French for “high needlework”, haute couture refers to the type of fashion design popular until the 1950s: ”made-to-measure.” This means that haute couture fashion designs cater to the needs of a specific customer. The clothes are made from very expensive fabrics and are sewn with extreme attention to detail. For the most part, haute couture pieces are hand sewn and take a long time to finish.

Ready-to-Wear: Ready-to-wear clothes are the medium when it comes to haute couture and mass market fashion designs. They may not be haute couture and made exclusively for one person, but this type of design takes extra care when picking out fabric. Fashion collections that are ready-to-wear are part of the fashion lines that are shown on the runways during fashion week.

Mass Market: Mass market fashion designs cater to the masses, providing ready-to-wear clothes for everyone. The fabrics used for mass market fashion designs are usually cheaper than those used for ready-to-wear and haute couture designs. Mass produced, mass market designs usually wait for a fashion design to be considered “trendy” before producing the clothes.

The following are some of the more popular sayings and words used in the fashion industry:

Boho chic – Boho chic refers to the mesh of bohemian fashion style and trendy designer getups. The mix and match of fabrics creates something unique but stylish.

Fashion Forward: Fashion forward is used to refer to something revolutionary, flirty and refreshing.

Passe: Another way of saying “so over”, or “that was so yesterday.”

The new Black: When a fashionista says, “pink is the new black”, it just means that pink is the “in” color for this season.

Edgy: The polite way of saying something is either very clever or pretty ugly.