A desperate plea to anyone that reads my blog !!!

It's not often I have problems when it comes to shopping ... HOWEVER, the high street aren't doing me justice this season !!!

I have one of my best friends birthdays coming up and have been searching for a dress every lunch break possible, working in Manchester you would think I'd of found half a dozen by now, but the only dress I've seen is £125 !!! and thats before matching shoes and clutch bag !

Everything is in awful colours, cheap fabrics and lazy embellishment especially Topshop, River Island and Lipsy. So this is my last ditch attempt for help.

My usual style is quite structured, neutral colours and preferable short and nipped at the waste. It's a style I'am sticking with as I feel it suits my shape and me as a person best. I'm looking to spend no more than £70 so anyone that can help I would be sooooooo grateful.

Here are some pictures of my favourite dresses, to give a better idea of the style I'm looking for !!!

FAD

FAD

A FAD is something that is quickly picked up and widely used and then goes out of
fashion very quickly.
Fad is very cheapily produced on a mass scale, it has to be made cheaply because the
trends are forever changing, and people won't be wiliing to pay for something that may
only be in fashion for 1-2 months.
The fabrics are also usually very cheap and therefore the garments never last very long.
The main example of FAD fashion is Primark. Possibely the cheapest clothing store in
world yet loved by young people as it is affordable. Thats the thing about Fad fashion
it is very much marketed to a youth market.
When designing for a fad market a designer must be thinking about current trends and
designing them with a easy and quick way of manyfacture.
Personally i can not stand FAD/Primark as i think it is so cheap and dispossible, i'd much
prefer to save for a few weeks and buy one or two dresses from a high street shop like
french connection that i know qill last and that i will get more wear ot of.

High Street

High Street

High street fashion originated in London with Marks and Spencers .
High street clothing is designed to be available and affordable for the general public.
A high street designer will usually study R-T-W fashion closely to see which trends
are developing and then water these designs down to sell in stores such as TopShop
for everyday wear.
High street clothing is mass produced as the shops that stock it are usually big
chain stores and therefore require alot of stock. They are sized very standard
to fit a wider range of people. Some shops even stock a tall/petite range to
cover even more customers.
Depending on the shop, clothes will be made to diffrent quality, for example
a beaded dress from TopShop may cost around £60, however the quality will
be quite poor and beads would easily come loose. Whereas a beaded dress
from French Connection will cost around £140 but will give a lot more wear.

Ready To Wear

R-T-W

Ready to wear is taken from the french "pret-a-porter". It is clothing that is sold in finished condition in standard sizing. Each Fashion designer usually shows both a fall and summer collection in a year, at one of the fashion weeks around the world. It is sold at either the designers flagship stores or at high end departments stores such as Harvey Nichols.
Different design houses produce R-T-W in different ways depending on demand, for example some fashion houses such as Gucci mass produce individual garments based on previous demand and some fashion houses will still only produce a limited amount such as Roberto Cavalli, and once they have sold out of one design there are no more.
In contrast to couture, these lines are never one of a kind. High-end ready-to-wear lines are sometimes based upon a famous gown or pattern that is then duplicated to raise the designer's visibility level and make them able to increase prices.
Ready to wear garments are usually made by machine apart from maybe the odd hand finishing, they are still of very high quality and use high standard fabrics.
A ready to wear designer must remember that the designs of their collections must stay current for 6 months and therefore trends are often taken from R-T-W clothing.

To show the contrast between Couture and R-T-W I have posted pictures of Dior spring summer 2011 ready to wear collection. You will notice they are alot more wearable ... Yet I still wouldn't pop to tesco in one of these fab dresses.

Couture

Whilst designing a huge aspect is which market level I'am appealing too, therefore our design process consists of 25 designs for :Couture, Ready-To-Wear (RTW), High Street and FAD.

COUTURE

Couture is high-fashion, the designs are usually very unique and the garments are custom made to fit the customer. On many occasions the designs also use very expensive unusual fabrics, which makes the prices of Couture very expensive and means that they aren't sold of the rail in shops.

The designs of couture dress makers/designer are also that elaborate that it is very hard for cheaper markets such as High Street to copy and therefore makes the pieces one offs.

The job of a couture dress maker is to produce these one off pieces to the highest quality standard possible, this usually means that the customer will have several fitting to make sure the garments fits to the body perfectly . They are also mostly produced by hand and may included large areas of hand embellishment which may take a whole team of seamstresses.

Couture originates in Paris with Dior starting the Golden Age in the 1940's-50's, in those days the couture elements really was more about the beautiful manufacture of the garments, yet more recently it has become more about the uniqueness of the clothing.

These are some images of the Dior s/s 2011 couture collection.