Fashion & Trends News - Page 4

Lakme Fashion Week 2020: Midway through the first-ever digital edition, a round-up of the best shows yet
As designers present filmed showcases of their collections, the need to support artisans is foregrounded as a playfulness of spirit and hope persists.

Lakme Fashion Week 2020 kicks off 'seasonless' digital edition, as hopes ride on online sales in face of coronavirus pandemic
Following a parched few months in luxury retail, can digital fashion weeks like LFW offer greater business to designers?

As global fashion events contend with COVID-19 era, Lakme Fashion Week 2020 gears up for first-ever digital edition
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns, fashion weeks across the world have been forced to recalibrate their existing practices, priorities, and their very role. The upcoming Lakme Fashion Week also grapples with these concerns in its first-ever digital edition.

Bhanu Athaiya passes away: Indian cinema's pioneering costume designer brought authenticity, style to films
Those who came into Bhanu Athaiya's orbit remember a wildly creative yet methodic professional, who brought an impressive formal expertise to the still nascent field of costume design in Indian films.

The history of the blouse shows how the garment aided working women and impacted the manufacturing industry
One staple of the working wardrobe has particularly interesting roots – the humble blouse, which gained prominence around the turn of the 20th century thanks to new manufacturing techniques.

Karl Lagerfeld's death signals the end of an era in grandeur and spectacle — and misogynistic, thin fashion
Karl Lagerfeld epitomised everything that (today) would be considered “wrong” with the fashion industry. But he also epitomised its voracious appetite for success, for global stature, for perfection, for reinvention season after season after season, for spectacle.

Fashioning the dancing body: Tracing the evolution of the Bharatanatyam costume, from Devadasis to modern times
Throughout history, Bharatanatyam costumes have walked a tightrope between revealing and hiding the female form, reflecting the underlying conflict between the sensual and the spiritual as it evolved

What is fashion doing in a museum? Notes on the spectacle that is the annual Met Gala
The Met Gala is a reminder to us that fashion is a visual record of our times. Only when we see it before us, in its historical and social contexts, will we be able to actually have a dialogue with it.

Courtroom fashion: What the clothes we wear in court say about us as accusers, the accused or witnesses
Even if you’re not the one on the stand being judged, you have to prove yourself ‘innocent’ to be heard in court. If you dress like a ‘good girl’ — submissive, feminine, asexual, obedient — your chances of this are higher. Dress like a ‘slut’ and you’re guilty already — of dressing like a slut, if nothing else. Women participate in this charade, intuitively knowing these extra-legal parameters against which they will be judged in courtrooms.

AI is making the fashion industry more intelligent — and expressions of style less individualistic
No amount of AI can create a Frida Kahlo or Lady Gaga; fashion delights us with its element of surprise, or when it cracks open a space for people’s own quirks to shine. An algorithm can do many things, but it can’t be you.

Victoria’s Secret models call #TimesUp on sexual harassment; is fashion industry's #MeToo reckoning here?
Victoria’s Secret came under the media glare when over 100 models signed an open letter asking that the company do more to protect its models from sexual harassment, after allegations came up against several of their photographers abusing their models, and of other shocking cases of sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking.

The problem is not how Greta Thunberg looks, but how we view young women
Greta Thunberg came to our laptops, phones and TV screens without make up, without formal dressing-up, or hairstyling. She came with pain in her eyes, and anger, and words that seared. Was it enough? Apparently not, for many men who commented on her looks and 'plainness' | Manjima Bhattacharjya writes in 'Curious Fashion'

Dressed to kill: The age of high fascism and fashion are inextricably and insidiously linked
Fashion was used under fascism to push their agendas. And certain fashion brands made money — indeed built their empires — through their complicity with fascist regimes | Manjima Bhattacharjya writes in 'Curious Fashion'

Wendell Rodricks passes away: Fashion designer is too small a term to encompass the multitudes that was Padma Shri awardee
Perhaps it was this fierce closeness to his roots that brought Wendell Rodricks such international acclaim. By being unabashedly local, he was truly universal.

Is grey finally having its fashion moment? An ode to the colour that defines the Western world’s history
Like Stonehenge or the Great Wall of China, grey has endured.