Fashion With the progression of the human society,

Fashion
   The first clothes were probably made just to protect people from the cold. But men and women soon wanted their clothes to be more than practical: they wanted them to be beautiful, too. The more advanced a society became, the more attention was paid to the manner of dress.
   Not long ago, the hand-made beautiful clothes were usually elaborate and always expensive. Fashion was for the royal, the rich, and the famous. Now mass production has made stylish clothes available to almost everyone. The modern fashion business has become one of the busiest activities in the world.
   In designing a dress the fashion designer works with three things: silhouette, fabric, and color.
   First, silhouette, Silhouette is the shape of the dress. It is determined by the flare of the skirt and the fit of the bodice, as well as the shape of the sleeves, the location of the waistline, and the cut of the neckline. The central and most important point of a silhouette is the waistline. It can be high, normal, low, or there can be no waist at all.
   A high waistline is called Empire, because it was made fashionable by Napoleon’s wife Josephine, who set the style for all the ladies of the French Empire. The most common waistline is the normal, or natural, one. It is usually belted. A waistline placed below the natural waist gives a long, slim silhouette that la called a torso look. The hemline is the second most important part of a silhouette. Hemlines vary in length anywhere from floor length to the short, above-the-knee kilt. In the ever-changing styles of women’s clothes, it is the waistline and hemline that change more than any other part of the silhouette.
   Second, fabric. The shape of a garment depends on how a fabric fails and how it looks when pinned and belted. Light fabrics such as silk and cotton cling to the body or fall around it in soft folds. More definite shapes that stand away from the body can be made of heavier fabrics such as velvet, linen, and flannel. Naturally designers choose fabrics according to the seasons. Fabrics can be both natural and man-made. Cotton, linen and burlap are made from natural fibers that come from plants. Other natural fabrics such as wool, furs, and silk come from animals. Man-made fabrics are called synthetics. They can be made to look like transparent silks or heavy wools. Often it is difficult to tell a synthetic from a pure silk, wool, or cotton. Some materials, like nylon, are completely synthetic; others, like cotton acetates, are a combination of a man made and a natural fiber. Man-made materials have certain advantages--they frequently wear longer, wash more easily, and do not wrinkle as much as natural fabrics. Often they are less expensive. Since the price of a dress depends partially on the cost of the material out of which it is made, synthetics have made possible a wide choice of inexpensive clothes.
   Third, color. Not long ago the color of a dress depended on the season and the time of day when it was worn. Winter wools were always dark. Summer cottons always light and pale. Bright colors were worn only by the young or for gala occasions. However, fashion designers have become more daring in their use of color. Vivid combinations are common. We often see bright orange, purple, or red combined with pink, and blue and lavender with bright green. Now wools can be pale and summery, cottons can be dark, and city clothes vivid. Perhaps the only traditional color left is white for the bride.
   The French word couturier means "dressmaker.” In the world of fashion, the word has come to mean "a designer of high fashion." It is these designers who begin trends and create new silhouettes. The work of famous couturiers is copied all over the world. Paris has always been the traditional center of world fashion. It is here that centuries of elegant court life and the love for beautiful things inspired some of the loveliest clothes ever made. Today, couturier salons such as Dior, Rice, Chanel, Givenchy, and many others carry on the tradition. But with the speed of modern communications, especially television, fashion today is almost universal.
    New styles are worn in Tokyo and Tel Aviv as soon as they are in London, Paris, and New York. And today new fashion trends are as likely to start with young people’s fad as they are to come from a "name" designer’s sketch pad. Wherever fashion begins, it always keeps pace with a changing world.