Introduction
You can hear the echo of their genius in any closet now-a-days, in a little black dress, or a tailor-made suit, the swell of the gown. These fashion designers that have become a household name did not solely invent clothes, they transformed the language of presenting oneself to the world. After years of learning about fashion history and talking to industry veterans, the things that I have learn to love about how these imaginative individuals could turn fabric and thread into cultural movements.
Coco Chanel: The Lady Who freed Fashion.
By the time Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel opened her first boutique in 1910, women were being corseted, confined, and even dressed like objects of decoration rather than being dressed like humans. Chanel considered this state of affairs and basically replied, "By no means not."
One of the last designs that I recall seeing at an exhibition of her work in a museum in 1916 was a plain jersey knit dress. The cloth in itself was groundbreaking. High fashion was not Jersey which people made underwear out of. But Chanel realized that women had to move, to breathe, to work. She borrowed a bit of menswear, experimented with women trousers, bore the legendary Chanel suit, its boxy jacket, and the knee-length skirt.
Her little black dress, which was launched in 1926, made elegance a democratic right. Prior to Chanel, the black color was associated with mourning or servants. She turned it into a fashionable, convenient, needful item. All the women, who have ever picked up a black dress in order to date, interview or some other occasion owe a debt to this French iconoclast who died in 1971 but whose impact remains eternal.
Christian Dior: The Man who rediscovered Fashion Dream.
Paris after World War II was grey, rationed, worn out. Then Christian Dior showed his initial collection in 1947, and the world did not know what beauty was like anymore. His new look consisted of tight waistlines, full skirts with yards of fabric on their backs, and a contour of the hourglass that was nostalgic and yet radically new.
Was it practical? Not particularly. Was it what war-wornied women desired? Absolutely. Dior realized that fashion appeals to psychological demands of people as well as physical. I have heard female friends recalling seeing those initial Dior products in the magazines - the lavishness was like a license to hope once more.
His legacy is so big that it is more than a figure. Dior set the pattern of contemporary fashion house: seasonal collections, licensed products, internationalization. He passed away unexpectedly in 1957, a decade later than that initial performance, but he already had changed the business model of the industry forever.
Yves Saint Laurent The Boundary Pusher.
In case Dior created fashion dream, his protege Yves Saint Laurent created it to face the reality. Having replaced Pierre Wertheimer at the helm of Dior at a relatively young age when the founder passed away, Saint Laurent later launched his own house in 1961, and he went ahead to break all the rules.
In 1966, he cast women in tuxedos with Le Smoking jacket a truly radical gesture that introduced the power and authority of menswear into the women wardrobes. He was inspired by art, street style, non-Western cultures. In 1965, his Mondrian dress made a painting into a wearable work of art.
The most remarkable aspect of the work of Saint Laurent is the extent to which it can be worn nowadays. Safari jacket, peasant blouse, a jumpsuit, the things are not museum relics but staples of his wardrobe that he invented or popularized.
Giorgio Armani The Architect of Power Dressing.
In 1980s when Giorgio Armani redesigned the blazer, he altered the dressing style of professional women in the pursuit of success. His loose-fitting, unstructured jackets in subdued colors became the dress code of female executives all over the world.
I once interviewed a lawyer in a corporation who began her work in 1985, and she said that when she first saw Armani jacket it was like armor it was something that she discovered. It allowed me to be an authority, but not to sound as though I was putting on my father's suit, she said. That is the Armani genius--making power dressing that would not disregard the bodies of women.
Alexander Mcqueen: The Savage Romantic.
Other designers change fashion in bits; Lee Alexander Mcqueen blew it up. The British designer has been trained in Savile Row and went to Central Saint Martins which became the combination of the perfect tailoring and theatrical spectacle and dark romanticism.
The legendary part was his runway shows, where the models were walking on water, surrounded by fire, and sprayed by robots with paint. But beyond the showmanship there was great serious technical innovation. His bumster trousers transformed the figure of the pants. His investigation of the historical methods of tailoring led to the revival of the lost mastership in the modern discourse.
Vivienne Westwood: The Couture Queen of punk.
The radicalism of Vivienne Westwood is usually neglected in the history of fashion, and that is just the opposite. She did not simply design punk clothes with Malcolm McLaren in 1970s-she simply used its lot of rebellion and turned it into haute couture.
Westwood demonstrated how fashion hard to accomplish could be lasting. Her corsets, crinolines and platform shoes were not aimed at making women comfortable but to create a statement. But her craftsmanship was technical, which meant that these suggestive works were also constructed beautifully.
The Common Thread
There were some qualities that these designers had in common with talent. There are beliefs they held regarding the way people were to dress and the reasoning. They knew historical backgrounds but were not bound by it. Above all, they realized that clothes are not merely about cloth, but it is about identity, power, lust, and change.
Their work makes us remember that fashion exists in the borderland between art and business, personal expression and social indication, custom and creativity. It is the designers who have to work through those tensions to produce something truly new.
FAQs
Who is the greatest all time fashion designer?
Coco Chanel often takes the lead in this list, because she has fundamentally redefined the fashion of women and made it simple and elegant, but strong rivals are Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior.
How did the little black dress come to be invented?
The little black dress was popularized by Coco Chanel in 1926 which made black, a fancied and multipurpose garment and it had a negative connotation of mourning.
What was the New Look of Christian Dior?
New Look (1947) had nipped in waists, full skirts and feminine profile with plenty of fabric, a symbol of post war optimism and luxury following years of rationing.
Has Dior employed Yves Saint Laurent?
Yes, after Christian Dior died in 1957, Saint Laurent was brought on board Dior as head designer at the age of 21, before starting his own house in 1961.
So what was unique about the designs of Alexander Mcqueen?
McQueen took a blend of tailoring accuracy on Savile Row and theatre-like showmanship, dark romanticism, and technical invention, which he fashioned into emotionally charged fashion.
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