When women were asked to talk about their favorite retail apparel stores, the answers varied from individual, small retail stores that catered to specific generational customers such as seniors and juniors, or occasions like formal events. Other answers included large retailers such as Bullocks, Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue.
However, times are changing, and now, customers can just go to their computers and open a search engine to look for womenswear retailers. Amazon Prime is also entering the clothing business with retail locations and competing with Walmart and Costco. You can also find used clothing outlets with dresses, jeans, handbags, activewear, tops, sweaters, skirts and designer apparel for as low as $10 each.
An article in Vogue Runway, titled “Couture Takes a Step into the 2020s,” offered this insight: “We’re two years into the 2020s, and ‘reset’ remains the operative M.O. In life — and in fashion — uncertainty is the norm, and that’s eliciting different reactions from designers. Some are countering with exaggeration and fantasy. Others are refocusing on core values.”
The article placed an emphasis on the “couture week” with this observation: “The most dramatic development for spring 2022 is what might be described as a sort of turn toward purity. The white column dress was the item of the season; there was one in almost every collection, and the most memorable combined elegance and ease, relying on construction and draping, rather than surface decoration, for impact.
“This loosening up of couture, which includes more of an emphasis on day looks (and at Valentino, size and age inclusivity), can be seen as a return to form. Traditionally, the job of the couturier had been to cater to the day-to-night wardrobe needs of women of means. Somewhere along the way, the métier seemed to become synonymous with overt luxury, but the magic of couture is in the construction as much as the surface decoration.
“The perfection of fit in fact is primary, according to the dandy Beau Brummell, who once said, ‘To be truly elegant, one should not be noticed.’ The point is: the person should be the focus rather than the wrapper.”
Maybe it is the pandemic that has created such diversions in women’s apparel. With Zoom meetings becoming the norm in many industries and offices being literally vacant with personnel working from home, fashion has obviously changed. Why spend hundreds of dollars on an item of clothing when one can get something just as tasty and trendy at a discount or used clothing store for a fraction of the price?
A recent article in Women’s Wear Daily announced a new fiber that may prove to be something very significant in the world of womenswear. The article stated, “The Lycra Company is stretching its sustainable offerings with a hot new fiber, Thermolite EcoMade, and said the fiber is made from 100% textile waste [and] replete with a new warming technology, making it a standout solution in the market. Its sustainable fiber product uses textile waste as an input to make commercial performance fibers, the company said, while it simultaneously provides a solution to help the industry deal with its textile waste problem, as well as creating a starting point for circularity, [it] explained.
“The company said its Thermolite Ecomade ‘adds a new dimension’ to sustainable lightweight warmth in cold-weather apparel and gear. Its warming technology involves recycling textile waste from cutting room floors that would have otherwise been sent to a landfill or incinerated, and instead, transforms it into high-performance fibers for insulation.”
To learn more about womenswear fashion, events and showings happening now and in the future, there are basically two publications that cover these matters. One is the California Apparel News (CAN), and the other is Women’s Wear Daily (WWD). WWD, which according to Wikipedia is often referred to as “the Bible of fashion,” states that its mission is to “provide information and intelligence on changing trends … in men and women’s fashion, beauty and retail industries.” The publication goes on to state that its readership is made up largely of retailers, designers, manufactures, marketers, financiers, media executives, advertising agencies, socialites and trend makers.
Benjamin S. Seigel, Esq. is of counsel to G&B Law, LLP and specializes in matters related to the textile and fabric industries. He can be reached at bseigel@gblaw.com.
