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The Importance Of Originality In Fashion

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORIGINALITY IN FASHION

BY FIRUZÉ FRENCH
The Importance of Originality in Fashion

By originality in fashion, I'm not talking about the originality of everyday people and their fashion style, what they wear and how they wear it. I'm talking about the difficulty top fashion designers face every 6 months when they make a great effort to create a contemporary and original collection for the fashion catwalk to please brutally honest fashion critics, of magazines and of the public. The struggle of designers to create collections that must be appeal to a wide range of evaluators, and what are considered to be the toughest judges in any industry, can sometimes be enough to put principal designers such as Viktor & Rolf on strike from creating a collection every six months in Paris, 1996. However, fashion seems to have a way of repeating itself, usually, I think, every five years, yet still manage to be able to be original but with the essence of fashion already accomplished.
Is it true to say that fashion is successful in this era because designers are original? Or is originality not as important as other factors in fashion, such as functionality and aesthetics? Many designers who are said to be innovative have a way of regenerating fashion from styles created in say the 1800s or as early as 1980s fashion, but is it simply inspiration for designers, or unoriginality?
Originality entails fashion designers to have the quality of being new and original, and not have ideas derived from something else, however most designers generally have inspiration for their ideas, but does this mean their idea's are not original? Inspiration initiates creativity, but originality means having the creativity in the first place. They both have different meanings, but can coincide together to create a collection never seen before.
The British Fashion Award is awarded to those designers who have been considered to make the most outstanding contributions to British...