Fast Fashion

 Fast fashion is the business model of replicating recent catwalk trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail quickly while demand is at its highest. The term fast fashion is also used generically to describe the products of this business model, particularly clothing and footwear. Retailers who employ the fast fashion strategy include Fashion Nova, Primark, H&M, Shein, and Zara, all of which have become large multinationals by driving high turnover of inexpensive seasonal and trendy clothing that appeals to fashion-conscious consumers.

  Fast fashion grew during the late 20th century as manufacturing of clothing became less expensive—the result of more efficient supply chains, new quick response manufacturing methods, and greater reliance on low-cost labor from the apparel manufacturing industries of South, Southeast, and East Asia, where women make up 85–90% of the garment workforce. Labor practices in fast fashion are often exploitative, and due to the gender concentration of the garment industry, women are more vulnerable. Outsourcing production to low-wage countries perpetuates cycles of dependence and inequality, echoing historical colonial economic exploitation patterns. The Design Piracy Prohibition Act was established to protect the designs of fashion designers. Numerous designers continue to sue fast fashion companies for copying their designs.

Fashion Week

 fashion week is a week-long fashion industry event where fashion designers, brands, or "houses" display their latest collections in runway fashion shows to buyers and the media which influences upcoming fashion trends for the current and approaching seasons.

Karmen Pedaru modeling for Michael Kors, Spring/Summer New York Fashion Week, 2013

The most prominent fashion weeks are held in the fashion capitals of the world—in chronological order, New York City, London, Milan, and Paris, or the "Big Four". The consecutive fashion weeks of the Big Four are referred to as fashion month.

The foundations of fashion week began in Paris in the late 1800s before spreading to New York, Milan, and London in the 20th century. What began as marketing garments in public spaces like racetracks grew into highly publicized events in themselves. In the 2000s, themes of sustainability began emerging at fashion weeks and grew popular across the next decade.

Fashion weeks in recent years have reflected a faster "retail cycle" with "see now, buy-now" and "in-season" fashion shows. Event organizers have proposed combining the collections for one season or men and women's wear shows to reduce the carbon emissions associated with these events.

Fashion Design

 Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction, and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by diverse cultures and different trends and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. They can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas." 

 Fashion designers work in a variety of ways when designing their pieces and accessories such as rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and clothes. Due to the time required to put a garment out on the market, designers must anticipate changes to consumer desires. Fashion designers are responsible for creating looks for individual garments, involving shape, color, fabric, trimming, and more.

Fashion designers attempt to design clothes that are functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. They consider who is likely to wear a garment and the situations in which it will be worn, and they work with a wide range of materials, colors, patterns, and styles. Though most clothing worn for everyday wear falls within a narrow range of conventional styles, unusual garments are usually sought for special occasions such as evening wear or party dresses.

Some clothes are made specifically for an individual, as in the case of haute couture or bespoke tailoring. Today, most clothing is designed for the mass market, especially casual and everyday wear, which are commonly known as ready to wear or fast fashion.

Fashion Trend

 A fashion trend signifies a specific look or expression that is spread across a population at a specific time and place. A trend is considered a more ephemeral look, not defined by the seasons when collections are released by the fashion industry. A trend can thus emerge from street style, across cultures, and from influencers and other celebrities.

Fashion trends are influenced by several factors, including cinema, celebrities, climate, creative explorations, innovations, designs, political, economic, social, and technological. Examining these factors is called a PEST analysis. Fashion forecasters can use this information to help determine the growth or decline of a particular trends.

People's minds as well as their perceptions and consciousness are constantly changing. Fads are inherently social, are constantly evolving in a contradiction between the old and the new, and are in a sense easily influenced by those around them, and therefore also begin to imitate constantly.

Fashion

Fashion is popular aesthetic expression at a certain time and in a certain context, especially in clothing, footwear , lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle and body proportions.Whereas a trend often connotes a very specific aesthetic expression, and often lasting shorter than a season, fashion is a distinctive and industry-supported expression traditionally tied to the fashion season and collections.Style is an expression that lasts over many seasons and is often connected to cultural movements and social markers, symbols, class and culture (ex. Baroque, Rococo, etc.). According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, fashion connotes "the latest fashion, the latest 

Even though they are often used together, the term fashion differs from clothes and costume, where the first describes the material and technical garment, whereas the second has been relegated to special senses like fancy-dress or masquerade wear. Fashion instead describes the social and temporal system that "activates" dress as a social signifier in a certain time and context. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben connects fashion to the current intensity of the qualitative moment, to the temporal aspect the Greek called kairos, whereas clothes belong to the quantitative, to what the Greek called chronos.

Exclusive brands aspire for the label haute couture, but the term is technically limited to members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris.

With increasing mass-production of consumer commodities at cheaper prices, and with global reach, sustainability has become an urgent issue amongst politicians, brands and consumers.