In 1968, with the help of his long-time friend Barry Schwartz, Klein took the leap and fulfilled his entrepreneurial dream ("Calvin Klein").
With his own company, Klein was able to pursue his vision of what fashion could be. At first, the company designed women's coats, but it soon branched out into other areas. Klein applied the simple, clean lines of his coats to women's sportswear, producing practical yet fashionable clothes. His designs gave women seeking empowerment "tailored suiting with an authoritative image without the loss of a feminine quality" ("Calvin Richard Klein"). Klein produced popular scents like Obsession, Eternity, and Escape, and he transformed men's underwear from utilitarian undergarments into something clean, simple, and sexy ("Calvin Klein").
The clean lines and subtle colors of Klein's works rebelled against the ornate and overwrought products of the 1960s and 1970s. He helped to create a truly American style that was distinct from European fashion houses. His line of jeans started the designer label trend. His advertising campaigns featuring actress Brooke Shields injected sexuality into marketing while his ads that featured young girls in provocative poses strongly challenged America's mores. Similarly, his scent CK One broke new ground as the...
Givenchy Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy was born in France in 1927. At the age of 25, he founded his own fashion house, The House of Givenchy. After becoming interested in the world of fashion following an excursion to the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, he took up studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1945 and 1946, he was allowed to design for the likes
Fashion in Relation to Commodity Culture of 1980s Fashion Fashion during 1980s seems to be glitzy and bold. Fashion trends were no longer dictated by teenagers; as the baby boom generation continued to become richer and older, they demanded more glamorous, upmarket fashion. Contrary to what inspired 1970s fashion, fashion of 1980s did not allow these non-materialist "hippie" values. Some of the nations such as Australia during the decade focused more on
SOCIAL IDENTITY & TODAY'S FASHION Crane holds that the fashion of today "has several diverse and inconsistent agendas, ranging from representations that echo sadomasochism and pornography to portrayals of women as empowered and androgynous." (2001) According to Crane "...the manner in which people perceive the social structure and conceptualize their identities within it has changed in the course of the twentieth century." (2001) The social identity was perceived by the individual
The four illustrations from the earliest decades of the twentieth century illustrate the importance of fashion in the formation of identity just as much as Twiggy's outfit does, and in fact are possibly even more telling given their distance from current styles. Regardless of what people of the time though regarding the sexuality of certain of these gown, all of them give the female figure an incredibly sculpted look, whether
Guy Billout (1941- ) A French born illustrator, Guy Billout has had a long career of producing clean and fresh illustrative works. Working within a modern and somewhat experimental tradition, Billout has shown his provocative works in many contemporary magazines such as Rolling Stone and Atlantic Monthly. He has also illustrator in several children's books including The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea and Something's Not Quite Right. With his work
CO Chanel Today, the term "designer" is too often associated with people who churn out clothing lines every season. In this sense, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel stands as a breed apart. Fashion analysts today attribute the birth of modern fashion to Coco Chanel. She is viewed as a woman and an artist ahead of her time. Her clothing influenced not only the way women dress, but the way women define femininity. In
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