Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is a multifaceted global sector focused on the design, production, marketing, and sale of clothing and accessories. It consists primarily of two segments: haute couture, which involves custom-made, high-fashion garments tailored to individual clients, and ready-to-wear clothing, produced in standard sizes for mass distribution. The roots of the fashion industry can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, when clothing was largely handmade, but it evolved significantly with the introduction of sewing machines, allowing for factory-made apparel.
The industry now includes major fashion capitals like Paris, New York, London, Milan, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and has increasingly become associated with broader social and environmental issues. Concerns such as worker safety, ethical labor practices, and environmental sustainability have gained prominence, particularly with the rise of fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M, which have been criticized for their impact on workers and the environment. Recent legislative efforts, such as France's ban on advertising certain fast fashion companies, reflect a growing awareness and demand for ethical practices within the industry. Additionally, initiatives like the Fashion Charter by the United Nations aim to address environmental challenges, promoting sustainability and responsible production practices. Consumer behavior is also shifting, with an increasing number of individuals opting for secondhand clothing and longer wear times to mitigate the industry's harmful effects.
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Fashion Industry
The fashion industry is a complex global industry that designs, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells clothing apparel and accessories. There are two major sectors of the fashion industry: haute couture, or high fashion, which is designers’ exclusive lines of custom-tailored clothing that is finished to client specifications, and ready-to-wear, or prêt-a-porter, which is clothing that is mass-produced in standard sizes and distributed through retail establishments. In the twenty-first century, the two sectors have become somewhat indistinct.
Overview
The fashion industry’s most basic tasks involve the production of raw materials into textiles and findings. Next, designers create garments using those textiles and findings; manufacturers produce them; and retailers stock, advertise, and sell them. During the early nineteenth century in the United States, most clothing was produced as part of home economy or assembled by seamstresses or tailors for people in a given area. Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most popular magazine in the United States prior to the Civil War, included illustrations and patterns that could be customized for sewing garments at home.
The fashion industry is a relatively new social construct that first developed in Europe and the United States. In 1856, American inventor Isaac Singer (1818–75) began selling sewing machines for home and factory use, paving the way for the rise of factory-made clothing that could be mass-produced in standard sizes and sold at fixed prices.
The first couturiers in France were seamstresses who filled out orders for clients, using patterns from magazines or copying dresses already in style rather than creating their own designs. Their businesses spread through word of mouth. Charles Frederick Worth (1825–95), known by many as “the father of haute couture,” was the first to put his name on a label and develop attributable, stylistic designs as an artist rather than as a craftsman. Worth’s dresses were displayed at London’s Crystal Palace during the Great Exhibition of 1851, and he was the first designer to create seasonal fashion lines four times a year.
In the twenty-first century, fashion centers included Paris, New York, London, Milan, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The fashion industry is not just about creating and marketing beautiful clothes; it has also served to raise global awareness of important industry-related issues such as worker safety, fair employment, and trade practices on the showroom runway and in manufacturing facilities.
The use of emaciated-looking models in advertising campaigns, the use of furs or skins from endangered animals, and the marketing of expensive goods to residents of impoverished neighborhoods are a few of the issues that have tarnished the industry’s image. The outsourcing of manufacturing to low-wage sweatshops in low-income nations continues to plague the industry, as it has for well over a century. Even in the early twentieth century in the United States, the garment industry employed poor immigrants and children in sweatshops that were notorious for their unsafe working conditions. In the early twenty-first century, many immigrant workers were still exploited as contractors required to produce piecework for non-living wages.
As such, much of the criticism surrounding the fashion industry in the twenty-first century centered around so-called fast fashion, or companies known for producing trendy clothing at affordable prices, often at the expense of quality and ethical practices. Some of the most well-known fast fashion brands in the 2020s included Zara, H&M, and Shein. Critics of fast fashion cited those companies' contributions to environmental harm through carbon emissions and water overusage; poor treatment of workers; and excessive waste due to the production of poor-quality garments that are quickly discarded. In March 2024, France became the first country to pass legislation aimed at the fast fashion industry. The French Parliament approved a bill that bans advertising of some fast fashion companies and enacts surcharges on low-cost items to cover their environmental impact, among other measures.
Global efforts to improve the fashion industry's impact on the environment included the Fashion Charter, which was established by the United Nations in 2018 with the goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The Charter also aimed to source 100 percent of the industry's electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and to phase out coal from the supply chain by 2030. Research has shown that consumer efforts to buy secondhand clothing and wear garments for longer periods of time began to improve during the early 2020s, as the public became more aware of the fashion industry's negative impact on the environment.
Bibliography
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