Fashion is a cultural phenomenon, including the styles of clothing, footwear, cosmetics, and jewelry, that change over time. These can be guided by social, economic, and political events, and are distinguished from other forms of adornment. The term can also refer to the industry that produces these trends, and to the broader societal movement that influences them.
Clothing has always been an important marker of social class, status, and individual style. For example, the sartorial code of the Edwardians was divided between those who wore tailor-made clothes and those who wore second hand or charity shop finds; the former were considered fashionable. In modern times, fashion is largely determined by commercial interests: the success of designers and labels rely on keeping their styles current in order to retain customers and attract new ones.
The fashion industry is a multibillion dollar global enterprise that includes designer boutiques and high street stores as well as mass-produced sportswear and “street” clothing. The division between high and low fashion has blurred, with many designers creating collections of garments for every price point, from luxurious, exclusive, and expensive designer pieces to everyday clothes at bargain prices for the masses.
Although there is some dynamism in the speed of changes in fashion, they are not sudden, and they are usually the result of a period of transition. For a change in clothing to be recognised as a fashion, it must spread amongst a population and be adopted by a large number of individuals within that population. This process can be either top-down or bottom-up, depending on whether a trend originates with the elite of a society and then is filtered down to the lower classes or whether a trend is popularised by the masses and then filters upwards through society.
