About Fashion & Beauty

About Fashion:

Find out exactly what fashion is, where trends come from and how to incorporate them into your look. Also, learn the ins and outs of dressing for work and how to dress appropriately for any occasion.

What is Fashion anyway?

1. The prevailing style or custom, as in dress or behavior: out of fashion.

2. Something, such as a garment, that is in the current mode: a swimsuit that is the latest fashion.

3. The style characteristic of the social elite: a man of fashion.

But for most people it is a method of utilizing clothing, accessories and hair to show or hide something about you.

You can use fashion to articulate yourself, to serve as an porch of your personality.

Fashion statements can be made with clothes, accessories, shoes, hair, makeup, even your cell phone.

Who decides what's in?

Designers can greatly influence what direction fashion will go in.

Working five or six months ahead of the season, the press attends fashion shows presenting designer collections; the media will then give editorial coverage to trends they think their readership is interested in.

Store buyers work many months in advance of the season to place orders with manufacturers for styles they think their customers will want to buy.

Celebrities and other opinion leaders (socialites and other glitterati) are usually the first to sport new looks, spurring the buying public into accepting emerging trends.

So everyone from big-name designers to celebrities may be behind influencing the direction fashion will go in.

But ultimately, it is you, the consumer, who will decide what is "in" when you choose whether or not to buy into a trend.

Where are the world's fashion centers?

New York, Paris and Milan are considered the major hubs for designers and manufacturers of fashion apparel and accessories.London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Hong Kong, Sydney and Sao Paolo, in addition to hundreds of other smaller market areas are host to excellent designers and manufacturers.

Why care about fashion?

Most people pay attention to fashion in small doses which is a very healthy way to approach it. They make sure wardrobes are in step with the times and even indulge in a trend or two each season.

A few reasons why fashion is still relevant:

• It shows your thinking is modern and flexible (e.g. willing to accept and process new ideas).


• Fashion has escapist qualities to help you deal with the pressures of the world (For example: your country may be at war, but you've "escaped" by dressing in the season's fluffy ruffles that make you look like you don't have a care in the world).


• Everything you put on sends a message.
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