The challenge in Apparel

The apparel in American is in danger because of the down turn in the economy. Just like housing market is in danger and the high job lost, people have no money to buy new clothes like they used to. Just recently I check the stock market for the apparel in America and it’s -17.40%. American also has to face another challenge in apparel because there are so many cloths made in China. The lower cost of labor in another country is causing the United States citizen to lose their job in apparel.
CNN Money.com had stated retailing had going down for four months in a row, and this has never happen before. Before we use to spend on what ever we can, but now everything have to be watch carefully. Gas price is going up, no job, live on payment to payment who will want to buy more in a time like this. People are thinking that they don’t need new cloth all the time, so that is why it causes a dramatic change to the stock market.
Even now gas price is going down, we are still not spending our money, I think we are worry and want to keep the money. The hope of Black Friday is yet coming soon, most apparel are waiting for this time to go up. You can also find things you never heard of and seen before. For example Channel is giving discount now, and high brand is marking they discount price. Layaway is also a new thing for this time of the year since market is going down. Apparel is hoping and waiting for the economy to go up so everything will be normal again.
http://money.cnn.com/?cnn=yes

Fashion is a Usability piece of Art

What is art? Art define in a different meaning for each individual, personally art is everywhere to me, anything with a human creation is art. What is fashion? Fashion is also a creation from a human’s inspiration, so to me fashion is art. However fashion is not just a piece of art to express an artist feelings but it is also a piece of art to be use in an everyday live for a human being. Fashion is art and usability all together.
Fashion is referring as a style for a recent looks a popular modern looks that can be created with different inspirations from a designer. It is more than just art because it can be use to cover a human body with styles. Fashion can be use in many different ways, to express the new trends, to make us more confident or to protect us from a cold weather. Also think of the creation of all the shoes that we wear, our shoes also had become a fashionable accessories items that we use every day. Shoes not only protect our feet but it also gives us more confident, especially for those who are not as tall as model like me, I’m very short. Fashion high heels give me lots of confident, and at least it gives me a few more inches.
Fashion is also use as a logo from different type of organization or it can represent a culture’s style for each country. For example think of the army clothes, and an African costume. Fashion is art, because the processes of creating clothing include thinking of the mind and draw it out as a sketch. Fashion can be the most usable art piece in the art collection.

Inspiration

During Spring Break 2008, I and some of my good friends wanted to do something really nice and something that we never done before. Before Spring Break we been working on a photoshot for Natural Blush, so we decided this time we will make our own dress.
The steps of making a dress for me are really interesting to all of us in a group, because none of us know how to make a dress before. Quan Mai(my best friend) and I decided how we are going to make the dress, first we talks about what dress I like. So our inspiration comes from a famous celebrity /singer from Japan, Ayumi Hamasaki. On her Album “Guilty” she wear a dress which we found out it was made by Dolce Gabbana.

I like it because it gives you the flow looks to it and it will be great in photos, so Quan Mai come up with the sketch and send to me so I can add thoughts to it. When our sketch is done, we made a lot of changes of course.



After that he measured my body, my height is very short so of course we have to add a little extra length to make me looks taller. After the measurement, it’s time for us to shop for the right fabric. We are not a famous designer so our fabrics are very limited, after spending for almost one hour we had picked out our fabric. Once again, our fabric is nothing like the Dolce Gabbana!!





We got the measurement, fabric and all the material for the dress. So Quan drew out the molds to use later and cut the real fabric.

Money and Milly(Two sisters) is also a big help in this project, they help assembly line so Quan can serge the fabric. After all the dress is finished, it looks to good we got to take some pictures of course. This is a really nice experience for me and everyone in the group, and we hope to do this more in the future.

Reference:iloveayumi. (2008, October 3). Retrieved October 3, 2008, from http://loveayumi.e-fan.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=175&pos=15

Ethnic Influences on Apparel Design

We see influences on apparel design come from all directions, different countries such as China, India , Mexico and the European. Since this week we are talking about ethnic influences on apparel, I thought of my country, Vietnam, my country is very small that is why we never heard that much about the fashion trends from there.
We might not see that much of the influence from Vietnamese fashion to other countries. However Vietnam fashion trends are just like other countries around the world. The economy had change to very staple and moving really fast, so the fashion also changed during the years. Our traditional dress had change to different trends because of the influence from other countries and the modern life styles.
Recently, in Miss Universe in Vietnam, there are a part where all the participants in the contest wear the traditional Vietnamese long dress called “Ao Dai”.

Miss Universe In Vietname


The real Traditional dress (ao dai) is very short, and it looks like this.
(This is a picture in UNCC Vietnight )










Some of the designers make a lot of changes, with the influence of the western world, and other part of the world. The dress changes in many ways, the long sleeves is no longer the same size, it is either longer, wider or none. The designer created a different looks to the dress, make it more modern and stylish. The dress is now also can be wear as a evening dress, or an big events. Even though it had changed, the some images of the traditional dress is still alive in each of the dress.


This is a Fashion Show in Korea with Korean Models in summer 2007 and the designer is Thai Nguyen


I hope you all learn a little about Vietnamese traditional outfit in my blog and also the changes to the Fashion on the Vietnamese traditional dress .

NY fashion Week !!!(Spring 2009)

New York Fashion week at this time is for spring 2009. When I watches a few videos of designers such a Calvin Klein, Zac Posen, Anna Sui and Marc Jabobs. Each year it seems like these designers are taking to the next level. Calvin Klein is focus more on geometry shapes, and very very architecture , I feels like it is very creative how he uses geometry to created his clothing lines like that. It looks very high class, elegant, and strong structure in his fabric. There are not much of a mix colors in his Spring 2009 collection.
For Zac Posen, amazing.. amazing, I have to said he is outstanding! Everything is about a urban women for this collection. Very flowing in some of the dresses and skirts, the flowing of his fabric makes a women more soft , and feminine. Unlike Calvin Klein , his collection at this time is very colorful, in a nice way, not to messy. The colors is very transparency , everything is just perfect for a women ready to wear. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFjeRfOZ0aQ
Anna Sui style for the Spring 2009 is very colorful, the color to me is bold but she also has some calm color in one or two of her dresses. I think the colors and the texture of her fabrics bring me back to the Native American, maybe because the colors is to bold and rich, I also think one of the swimsuit is quite interesting.
Overall I think all designers has it own ways of creating beautiful ready to wear clothes for this Spring 2009 coming up. I just wish that I will see some like that in forever 21 so we all can share the love with less money. Just joking.

My favorite designer and why?

Zac Posen is my favorite designer. I got introduced to while talking to a friend a few years ago. When I learn more about his fashion line I just fall in love with his works. He is a very young and talented designer, I like his works because he was inspired with vintage, and I love vintage. Ever since I know about Zac Posen, I always wanted to check on Style.com to see his new season works.
I think every woman should appreciate his works, because his main focus was on women, and women is his inspiration. He likes to make beautiful finishing product for women. His energy is so positive that motivates me to make more beautiful works like he does.
To be a successful fashion designer, you have to have your own style however you need to have someone to look up for and can inspired your works. We all know that style goes round and round and each time a designer add their own style in to it. I like to make dresses a lot

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