oh hi i didn't see you there my name is bliss foster and today we are covering the major terms that are used in fashion when you're first starting out in fashion whether you're getting into it for a career or just trying to keep up with it as an art form it can be really frustrating seeing people use all of these terms and just throwing them out as if everyone is immediately on the same page and as we'll see here there's many of these terms that have very loose definitions that can mean multiple things at once etc etc so the goal of this video is to try to clarify some of those things and make it where we can all have better conversations around fashion as always please leave a comment down below as to what you learned from this video if you learned anything at all even if someone already said your thing go ahead and type it out in your own words i find that writing things that i've learned helps cement them in my brain and helps me keep them for longer term memory i wanted to create this video so that we have a quick like just glossary of terms that you could go through very quickly and familiarize yourself with the stuff but i'll be also linking in the description links to the other videos so that you can dive in more deeply if you'd like to explore the topics further let's jump in archive clothing from the past body of work of any given designer or brand this term seems very straightforward it's it's been adopted a whole lot by the avant-garde menswear world and uh we'll get into avant-garde here in just a minute uh but i do want to clarify this word importantly as it is distinct from the word vintage two separate terms we're gonna cover archive first archive fashion has become much more of a topic of conversation lately as people are discovering that it is very important to look at an artist's entire body of work in order to understand what they're currently doing with their work this is the standard in just about any other art form's criticism and it's really cool that in fashion we've started to see the importance of that not just in the people who are studying this stuff professionally but in the the group of people who are just keeping up with it for fun in just about every other form of art looking at an artist's entire body of work is a really common practice it's very cool that in fashion now even among people who are just following this as a hobby that this is becoming more and more an important part of the conversation looking at their previous group of work and being able to pick out little references and nuances and seeing how their work is developing over time most brands themselves keep an archive of their own work and that's either something where they have a perfectly preserved single copy of everything that they've ever made somewhere locked away in a basement or they end up later going back and having to buy it from collectors again this term is very important especially in its relationship to the word vintage and i mean if you just go by descriptions on depop and grail and ebay and stuff those two words get used interchangeably but there is almost no point in having two separate words for something if there's not some distinction between their definitions so for the purposes here archive just refers to any season by a designer that is not their current season so if we're currently in spring summer 2022 that means that fall winter 2021 is part of the archive vintage on the other hand refers to things that are much older here in 2021 we kind of lose the usefulness of this term vintage if we're just referring to items that are from 2016. the definition for vintage comes from the wine world where it just talks about the year or place in which wine especially wine of high quality was produced obviously for our context here we're not talking about wine and that definition has been expanded out to uh be part of the antiques world and lots of other things as well in the antiques world something does not become vintage until it is at least 50 years old but because fashion is cyclical and because it moves so much faster than other forms of art i think it's safe to say that fashion becomes vintage after it is 20 years old vintage fashion has been a really interesting part of the industry because it's allowed a lot of people to get into this hobby for a much lower price than they would have been able to just going to a retail store for brands that they really love it becomes a way for us to explore the history of a brand in the progression of their aesthetic over time without having to spend retail pricing on the thing usually unless the piece is really historically important vintage fashion stuff sells for you know 10 of what a retail piece might sell for and the industry has even taken notice of this vintage dior saddlebags used to sell on ebay for around 300 bucks and as the demand for those vintage pieces went up the value of them started increasing on the secondhand market eventually dior noticed this and started reissuing the saddlebag and now we see brand new saddlebags absolutely everywhere all this to say i think that anything that's 20 years or older can safely be called vintage in fashion and everything that is vintage is also archival but things that are archival are not necessarily vintage this content is brought to you by all the folks that support me on patreon and you should become one of those people patreon just allows you to give a small amount of money each month to creators that you really love with that there's a lot of perks like joining the private discord getting exclusive content but most importantly you are making it so that this kind of content can continue to happen youtube ads make almost no money and i depend on the patreon to be able to keep this my full-time focus the link is i think here here is on the screen please join warp and weft the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric the warp is the horizontal threads and that's the ones that are typically being held by a loom and the weft are the ones that are being woven over and under the warp threads in the most simple version of this it just forms a checkerboard fabric is usually cut along either the warp or the weft unless of course it is bias cut and that leads us to bias cut to be cut on the grain at a 45 degree angle rather than following the straight line of the weave bias cut clothes create more fluidity in the appearance of the clothes allowing the fabric to lay in a way that accentuates the body more and creates more fluid curves and soft drapes so the easiest way to think about this is that the warp and the weft are normally cut horizontally and vertically like this something being on the bias just means they're like this they're diagonal for fashion history this cut is most associated closely with the dresses and gowns of the couturier madeline vna who was huge in the 1920s and 30s she didn't invent the bias cut but she was the first one to use it for the entirety of a garment that also says a lot about how the shape and the structure of clothing was changing during the 1920s and 30s another big utilizer of the bias cut is john galliano he has spent the majority of his career experimenting with different fabrics and different tensions and different shapes that can be done using the bias cut link and build collaboration the action of working with someone to produce or create something just about every brand that we all keep up with has collaborated with someone for something at some point even if that collaboration wasn't something that they made very public i mean chanel collaborates with tons of different artisans that they're not necessarily talking about publicly or doing a press release for but they need those artisans in order to execute specific techniques that they themselves are not able to do in-house most of the time fashion collaborations work by allowing a brand to utilize the manufacturing or distribution resources of another brand or the skill set and expertise of a different brand and then they come together to create a unique product most often fashion collaborations are an exchange of some kind most people talk about collaborations as if it's supposed to be two brands coming together where the designers mutually respect each other's work and then they're just working together to create something special for the sake of art okay so the reality of this is that collaborations are a business move that serves two purposes for the smaller brand involved it allows them to get access to the distribution channel and the facilities just the machinery that the bigger company works with in order to make something that they wouldn't be able to make on their own they don't they're smaller they don't have the resources to be able to do it big brand has those resources it also gives them a lot of promotion to work with the big brand the big brand working with the little brand gets something kind of unique they get cachet they sort of get street cred from working with them when sakai works with nike they were able to create a shoe that sakai likely on their own wouldn't have been able to create this also gave sakai an enormous amount of advertising there were people that found out about sakai simply because of this one shoe nike on the other hand gets the street cred of sakai who in the world of you know fashion heads is known as a very well respected cool japanese fashion brand that makes nike look cooler because they are working with them i would say that about 98 of all collaborations in the fashion space go by the dynamic that i just described collaborations can even be fashion brands themselves working together to create a unified vision this is proving to be a massive success with balenciaga and gucci's mutual hack and we'll see how things shake out with versace and findi importantly here when luxury fashion brands do this it seems to try to capitalize on the kind of unbelievable crazy mix of each other's branding so far it's tended to lead to more logo product and i think that's why these brands are very insistent about not calling them collaborations they call them hacks or swaps usually when luxury fashion brands do this and they're held under the same holding company like caring holds both gucci and balenciaga the goal is usually to create some kind of crazy variation on those brands logos because of copyright laws the logos of those brands are the one true thing that no one else is able to touch and so the brands giving those logos up and allowing them to be manipulated even by another brand that's in the same holding company at least from the brand's perspective that's a very big deal couture the design and manufacture of fashionable clothes to a client's specific requirements and measurements couture usually refers to the process of making client-fit clothing most often bought by a very select number of wealthy people couture is usually seen by the public worn on red carpets and other really grand functions like galas and fundraisers you may also be familiar with the term oat couture let's talk about the difference because it's it's a pretty big one couture just translates literally into dressmaking and oat just means hi any dressmaker could at any time make made-to-measure clothing for a client of theirs and that would be couture clothing okator is a little bit more complicated in france the term oath couture is protected by law and is defined by the commerce and industry chamber of paris and underneath that the chambra sendikal de la utt couture which is defined as quote the regulating commission that determines which fashion houses are eligible to be true oak couture houses end quote the origins of oak couture are attributed to charles frederick worth who in 1858 founded the first couture house by definition of the shambhala the shaumbra has a very high standards for what qualifies as oak couture we're going to talk about what the specific requirements are to be oak couture according to the shaumbra but it's unclear as to which of these things are being held to very strictly and which ones they give a little bit more leeway for certain brands and when that actually does happen in order to qualify for the oak couture label a brand must design made to order for private clients with one or more fittings have a workshop an atelier in paris that employs at least 15 staff members full time have at least 20 full-time technical employees in at least one atelier and present a collection of at least 50 original designs to the public every fashion season twice in january and july of each year of both day and evening garments in order to become a member of the chamber sendikal de la oate tour a brand must first be invited to be a guest member after being invited for four season the brand would then have the opportunity to become a full member correspondent or international members are couturiers that operate outside of paris but still show during the oak couture season examples of that would be things like valentino or armani which are both italian houses if you'd like to get into more detail about that when i go into a more broad conversation about oak couture in my analysis of pyrmos's first couture show by contrast to couture note couture we have ready to wear made for the general market and sold through stores rather than made to order for an individual customer off the rack ready to wear or preporte was a super revolutionary concept when it was first introduced women in the early 19th century wore very ornate clothing that relied on precise fit to accommodate different body types middle class and lower class women of the same time would regularly adjust their pre-existing clothing to adapt to changing trends while wealthier women would just get custom usually couture garments the demand for more affordable and fashionable clothing went up and that corresponded with an increase of manufacturing capabilities and so first we got the sears mail order catalog and then everything blew up when eve st laurent introduced ready to wear into paris high fashion if we want to get super technical with it the first true example of ready to wear was for military clothing for men that was mass produced in the united states during the war of 1812. despite the enormous price tag of oak couture ready to wear is substantially more profitable if you're ever confused and you're trying to figure out like is this ready to wear or couture you can just look at whether or not it has a size tag if it says small medium large the jacket is size 40 anything all of that is ready to wear creative director as opposed to a designer one who determines the creative vision of a brand or project and manifests that vision through digital print and film installations in fashion creative directors are responsible for setting the vision of a brand and then delivering that vision through the clothes season after season when we get news of a new creative director filling the helm at a major house it gets everyone talking as we're anticipating the work in the new vision that is going to come from the house now that a new person is in charge of that vision but a creative director is not always a fashion designer themselves one is not necessarily better than the other for the purposes of fashion as an art form but it is important to note that they are different jobs fashion designer is a really easy term because it's just someone who is technically able to draft a pattern themselves then execute the techniques that are needed to create a sample of the design from beginning to end the american designer jordan arthur smith is a great example of this but a creative director and specifically what they're doing to bring that vision to life over the course of a season that's changing constantly first of all and if you looked at 20 different creative directors you would find 20 different pretty different processes it's such a fluid term in fact that one of virgil abloh's stated goals is to change the public perception of what a creative director does our understanding of what a cd is now is very different than what it was seven years ago and seven years from now it'll probably be very different again democratization the action of making something accessible to everyone people who are really into fashion as an art form usually talk about democratization as more access to the the process that goes into making clothes and more insight into the inspiration that brought about those designs in the first place for years luxury brands have mostly hidden away both the process of making the clothes and the inspiration behind the clothes because they were afraid that revealing that would ruin the mystery for the clients that's now a very old old-world way of thinking about things and now consumers are wanting to get as much access as is possible to both of those sides of the brand building so that they can feel more connected with what's going on so an example of democratization of fashion would be just making it where people could read the show notes for runway shows making those readily available it could be just making an instagram post about a specific dress and talking about where the inspiration for that dress came from the nuances of the fit and the cut where did the color come from all of these things just this information allows people to follow along with the story of fashion without spending money on it specifically and i mean if we're just talking about it from the brand's perspective if someone has a closer connection to the brand and the storytelling that they're doing they're also more likely to spend money on that brand seems like a win for everybody but we'll see how this develops many of these terms are terms that i have created entire videos about i have a whole video out where i go into a lot of depth about the democratization of fashion and if you would like to check that out you most certainly may i'm also going to take this time to re-up my proposal that fashion shows should most certainly go on tour let's make it happen folks deconstruction a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes stay with me don't go anywhere stay with me which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems the relational quality of meaning and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression so some of you may know that my academic background is in literature deconstruction is definitely the the heavyweight part of the philosophy of literature if i'm being super honest we didn't even cover deconstruction very deeply in my theory class it is a very hard technique of analysis to pin down and understand well enough to execute what i'll say here is that it is not just applicable to literature or philosophy it is a way of looking at everything and the relationship that the philosophy has to fashion is pretty minimal i aspire to make a video at some point about how the philosophy of deconstruction can be applied to fashion but that's not what we're gonna do right here in her article deconstruction the making of unfinished decomposing and reassembled clothes alison gill discusses the subject at length stating that deconstruction in fashion serves as a auto critique of the fashion system that it's meant to reveal what draws people to fashion in its glamour and exclusivity as well as the technical elements of form and fabrication deconstruction to gill means the reverse of construction demonstrating the unfinished or destroyed look of garments many designers have used deconstruction as either a philosophy of their entire body of work or used it in a motif in little ways throughout different collections there's an iconic video of alexander mcqueen deconstructing a suit that's meant for a wedding but we generally know deconstruction to be closely associated with the work of ray kawakubo yoji yamamoto martin marzella and tons of others but even then the definition of deconstruction as a practice of undoing construction implies that the garment being created is liberated from their function which is not really applicable to the fashion world at all gil writes that deconstruction is watered down for its application to the creation of clothing because fashion does have a prescribed function clothing your body again we're going to end up going into much more depth on this soon i feel a little bit weird about doing this part here but it should be noted that for most people who are throwing around the word deconstruction that either applies to clothing that looks like it's destroyed looks like it's falling apart or clothing that shows elements of the clothing that should be hidden but aren't hidden like a zipper that should be on the inside but is now on the outside for a lot of its uses in fashion journalism that is what deconstruction means anti-fashion an umbrella term for various styles of dress which are explicitly contrary to the fashion of the day anti-fashion is something that we've extensively covered on the channel here many designers that you know and love ray akubo of com de garcon martin marzella yoji yamamoto all of them fall outside of the standard fashion and are acknowledged as being anti-fashion designers i have a whole video where we're talking about the nuances of what the definition for anti-fashion should or shouldn't be you should definitely check that out that video is i'm super proud of it but there was actually a really telling comment on that video that changed my mind a little bit about how i see this as a term i will quote them directly the way i was taught that anti-fashion is in school is when a style doesn't follow current trends and stays consistent throughout the years to that aesthetic so for example london's punk aesthetic has stayed pretty consistent throughout the decades yoji yamamoto would definitely fit into this definition of anti-fashion since his clothes have pretty much stayed the same since the 80s this helps us out a lot because the core of my original video was talking about how the definition of anti-fashion sets it up where there are almost no designers that meet those requirements anymore if you'd like more details you can check that video out this definition given by this wonderful commenter helps us out a lot because of the part where it says that the designer's aesthetic remains consistent lots of designers fall into this category now and it is a much more useful term for us to be able to have productive conversations about clothes so i'm happy to admit here that i wasn't using the most useful definition when i made that original video i think the conversation was still worth having but i would have liked to have been able to start from that same point so that we could have had an even better conversation about it it is always a good idea to challenge the definitions of words to make sure that we are using them in a way that is helpful and moving conversations forward not to get caught up in the little nuances of like oh what genre is this is this like post rock or arena rock like not that kind of stuff but just is this definition serving the purpose of helping us have a better conversation right now that's always an important discussion to have and thank you for the correction homie i love corrections avant-garde new and unusual experimental ideas especially in the arts or the people introducing them while generally avant-garde just refers to newness in the arts in my video for avant-garde i pointed out that susan suntog in her book against interpretation defined avant-garde as experiments of form at the expense of content this term is super nuanced and can lead to some really incredible conversations about art i made an entire video about this one you should check it out but i guess the easiest way of talking about avant-garde is just that it's artists within any medium who are on the cutting edge conversation about their own medium it's kind of state of the art for art the only real distinction that has to be made is that trend and avant-garde are not the same thing you can usually tell them apart by looking at how much money is involved i mean something that is truly avant-garde in fashion is probably not something that is available today at sheen or h m that's it go join the patreon so you can get on the private discord where we have some of the best conversations about fashion that i have ever been a part of on the internet make new fashion friends meet other people who think about this stuff the way that you do and find other things to inspire your own work don't forget to leave a comment down below about what you learned from this video and again even if somebody already commented your thing i want to hear about it in your words cement it into your brain by writing it down love you mean it bye