Military Influences In Fashion

Several years ago, military styles become popular in fashion. We can find many designs which catch our eyes, such as trench coats or just a detail like epaulets. Basically, I mostly see the military style of clothes on the runway shows are coats, jackets, and suits. However, interestingly, I would like to introduce the Fall 2010 Ready-to-Wear collection by Junya Watanabe in Paris. In fact, his works are conceptualizing war as a theme by concentrating the eyes on skirts. By the way, I was also impressive about the hairstyle of these models.

"Flared, flouncy, pleated, and generally bursting into swishy lower-body volume, they represented a brilliantly focused resolution of one way the fashionable silhouette is being reshaped for winter." said Sarah Mower on Style.com.

Junya Watanabe also used a lot of elements and styles of military in his design, such as parkas, anoraks, camouflage print, and flight jackets. I think he did a great job to put these different clothing style together throughout the topic of military. For example, he can match jacket, drapery skirts and legging together, but it is still logic and makes senses. Also, these drapery skirts are so fabulous and help the military style express more feminine. Especially, I like the dress with camouflage print on it. It is a very beautiful print and it is also very interesting idea to create a comtrast between miliatry and feminine style.

Jeans in fashion

Jeans are originally designed for work. However, it has become one of the most popular styles nowadays. Levis's is very famous to design all kings of style of jeans, such as original, skinny, slim straight, and boot cut. Even if we can find some desginer jeans on the runway shows.Currently, skinny jeans must be the mainstream trend on the streets. For example, like Levis, its 511 skinny jeans and 510 super skinny jeans. These jeans are skinny and has a darker color, such as dark blue. Besides, jeans are made from denim. The material is durable and comfortable to wear. The finish is usually stone washing and dark washing. It is popular because jeans easily fit all kinds of clothing style and is never out of fashion. It is suitable to wear jeans in most occasions. People can wear jeans to go shopping, participate in an meeting or just go on a picnic.

Basically, I think skinny jeans will be still popular in next several years. In the future, I believe jeans never change a lot. However, designers will try to create more variable details in the jeans, even combine a belt with jeans. For example, it may have a specific silluette, different patterns which can personal ans creative style, and new finish.

Historical Draped/Tailored Garments

The way of draping and tailoring has always affected the design of clothes until now. We can find many similar style in draping or tailoring in the past and in different culture. Let's look back upon these historical draped/ tailored garments. I think we can find something inspiring and innovative.

Draping:

Long time ago, in Greece, the ladies' garment differs little from the men's wear. Its name is indumentum. It is a traditional clothes that Clothing from under is the tunic which was made up of two bent wool parts, sparing passages for the head and the arms. This tunic is long and can go down to the heels. Anyway, it is a very basic style of draping in the past.

Left - Dress of 1799 Le Journal Des Dames et Des Modes 1799.

Right - Dress of 1800 The Lady's Monthly Museum 1800.

This is Empire Line dress. The fabric for Empire line dresses was usually fine white lawn, muslin or batiste. The white draping style was a sign of social status at that time.

The time can be back to 14th century. The style is from Indian. Its name is Sari. Sari is designed through a flat fabric that is wrapped, draped, and pleated to form a garment.

"The history of Indian clothing trace the sari back to the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished during 2800-1800 BCE around the western part of the Indian subcontinent"(by Wikipedia)

Tailoring:

This clothing style is in the middle of 17th century. It is a elegant style that women wore a tailored coat with a petticoat and a hat.

The clothes is in 16th Century. It was called "Jerkin". We can see the pattern of which it has been cut to fit the wearer. It is Spanish Brown silk voided velvet trimmed with metallic bobbin lace. It is a historical tailored garment.

The clothes is in 1950s. There are 2 styles in the tailored dress. Dress has forward shoulder seams with pleats at upper and lower edge of bodice front. It is sort of like a trench coat.

Draping or Tailoring

Nowadays, we can see all kinds of RTW clothing that are showed in this season in fashion, especially the topic of minimal. However, in my mind, I still think John Galliano is one of the greatest designers. His designs always affect many designers’ ideas, and lead the fashion world. Interestingly, for spring, his runway show is so much about theatrical elements cushioning the actual fashion. He used silks to make clothes have a nice hand and textile. Also, he decorated clothes with floral embroidery and flat tiers of ruffles. I think the success is because John Galliano is really sensitive to fashion and is full of creative designs in his mind. Besides, the emphasis of fabrics is also important to make them be successful. In my point of view, I think John Galliano is very creative and innovative in tailoring. When I saw his runway show in 2010 spring, some of them really inspired me. It seems to say something. These clothes are very amazing.