Ready-to-wear and Mass Fashion- Affordable and High end fashion!
In most people’s closets, you’ll find many shirts and trousers with little tags inside them in addition to a brand name. This is described as ready-to-wear. It is basically clothing in different sizes and colors, manufactured and sold from a store to readily wear it without any customization. This form of clothing has been there since hundreds of years, there are records of such clothing being sold in ancient Babylonia. High-end designers showcase their ready-to-wear collections every year in Paris Fashion Week. In the mid 20th century the focus of fashion designers shifted from couture to ready-to-wear and since then, fashion has been lot more mass. Vionnet and Paul Poiret put their hands on ready-to-wear clothing but during their time this domain was very unusual. Nobody was really attracted to this idea. But the youth culture of the 60s presented the need for more accessible clothing.
The first designer to really throw himself into ready-to-wear was Pierre Cardin in 1950. In 1953, he was kicked out by the organization of couture, but that didn’t stop him. He launched his men’s ready to wear line in 1961.
The concept of ready-to-wear became more extravagant when a youthful designer, Yves Saint Laurent opened his first two shops in 1996, named Rive Gauche. This became too famous, too soon. It completed all the needs and demands of the youth’s culture.
After Saint Laurent’s revolutionary move, ready-to-wear fashion became a necessity for the couture designers and it became the primary vehicle through which designers could showcase their outfits to the customers.
The mass-producing luxury fashion went to another level when licensing deals exploded. Pierre Cardin became very famous for his licensing deals. He happily licensed his name to different companies to produce all types of goods- handbags, watches, and more. Pierre Cardin’s goods were seen everywhere. But this somehow cheapened his brand name.
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