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Introduction
When we go shopping for clothes, we see a variety of products that are totally different. The products are that different because they are designed to have different impressions on different people but essentially, the passion employed in the creation of each of these products is the same. Fashion design is a field that entails a lot of activities ranging from creation of designs to the marketing of the finished fashion products. Fashion designers are creative artists who have a lot of passion in their job and hence they get contentment in the creation of new masterpieces of design. The designers know the dynamics of fashion and thus develop designs that have a commendable impression on their customers (Jones 4 – 6). The period between the fourth decade of the twentieth century and the seventh decade of the same century saw substantial revolution in the field of fashion design. This revolution brought a lot of ideas and players in fashion design. A commendable part of this revolution is the introduction of private boutiques selling their owner’s original designs (Jones 12). Let us have a look at some examples of these fashion designers.
Marilyn Brooks
Biography
Marilyn Brooks was born in Binghamton, New York on 13th November 1932. She grew up in Detroit and acquired her education in its environs. She had a passion for design since she was a child and could sew her own designs at a tender age of eight years. After developing her skills for a couple of years, she got a job in the early 1960’s as a display director with John Northway and Sons in Canada (Marilyn 4). After an approximate three years in Canada, she started her own clothes line and opened her first boutique, Unicorn that was based in Toronto Canada. Here she was one of the first players to operate the clothes business by selling her own designs. From the passion she had, her business grew to become multinational with boutiques in Toronto and San Francisco and with retailers all over the U.S and Canada. She has seen a lot of success in her life stemming from her success in fashion design. She has thus received a lot of awards related to her achievement in the fashion design industry. An example of these is the Judy ME (Merchandising Excellence) Award she received both in 1966 and 1986, she founded the Toronto Ontario Designers and she is a member of CMG (Color Marketing Group) for many years. Despite her age she is now the president of Ontario Designers in Canada (Marilyn 7).
Background Influence
The life Marilyn Brooks lived as a child had a lot of contribution to her passion for fashion design. As a child Marilyn received home sewing lessons and by the age of eight she was sewing her own designs. This passion that she developed at this tender age is the one that drove her to work for John Northway and Sons which was a clothes store in Canada. In this store she worked as a display director and therefore she could interact with various designs and thus she continued developing passion for fashion design. This long-developed and nurtured passion coupled by the experience she had attained after working for John Northway and Sons led her to come up with her own boutique. She thus secured for herself the opportunity to continue developing her talent in fashion design since she was selling her own design. The design industry then was not as flooded as it is today and thus, there were a limited number of designs in the market. This gave her an upper hand in the creation of original masterpieces of designs which contributed to the success that she achieved. The fact that clothes stores were limited then also gave irrefutable input to the continual progress that was seen by the fashion design industry in those days. This is because competition for product markets was very minimal and designers could make a lot of profits from the clearing their stocks of designs within a short time. The designers could also use the advantage of ready markets and availability of finance from their profits to expand their businesses. The level of technology then was also limited. With the rise of new technology related to the processing of raw materials used in the fashion industry, designs could be converted into finished garments with increased efficiency. This removed the necessity of a large number of workers when starting a boutique. This ease of start-up and operation backed up by her skills in design was a key motivator in the starting of her own boutique and the expansion of the same (Marilyn 9).
Prominent styles
Most of Brook’s designs are feminine with variations in design ranging from romantic wear to cultural attire. She however creates designs for men too. Her designs are characterized by pronounced variety especially the feminine designs. This has helped her to capture diverse customer bases and expand her business. Her designs have attracted celebrities an example being the king of popular music: Elvis Presley. Since the start of her business, Marilyn has created hundreds of thousands of designs each with a success story (Cox 1). An example of her designs is shown below
Jean Claude Jitrois
Biography
Jean Claude Jitrois, born Narbonne in 1944, to a French Air Force Army officer left for Paris to Psychology in Salpetriere Hospital. He discovered his passion for fashion while creating playing costumes for the disabled children he used to take care of in the hospital. He was afterwards motivated by his father’s aviator jacket after which he made one for Stephanie after he had the opportunity of meeting her. Seeing the quality of his work and considering his passion for fashion design, he left his psychology career to become a fashion designer. In 1976, after making the necessary preparations he opened a boutique in Nice, France. He grew with time opening one boutique after another in different locations in France. He later continued his design relationship with the royal family of Monaco, designing for Stephanie and Caroline and in four years after opening his first boutique, he made the famous design for Brigitte Bardot. In 1981, he indulged in leather business which came with men’s wear opening his first line of this kind, J3. This led to much success and fame for his clothes business that subsequently led to the opening of the Rue Faubourg in Paris. His contribution to the fashion industry is massive having revolutionized the leather industry with his idea of stretch leather designs. Jitrois has made continuous contribution to the refinement of leather for use in the fashion industry making leather garments of unbelievable comfort and design. Jitrois has also expanded the scope of the use of leather to include python leather. In 1998, Jitrois opened additional stores in London, Paris and Spain in a bid to expand their market. Presently, Jitrois is stocked in world class stores around the world (Davis 1).
Background influence
It can be confidently argued that Jean Claude Jitrois’ education was the one that introduced him to passion in design. In Salpetriere Hospital, where he was studying psychology, he started making garments for disabled children in an attempt to light up their lives. He designed costumes that made these psychologically unstable children identify with successful people like soldiers, firefighters, pilots etcetera and in so doing, helped in strengthening the personality of these children. It is this way that he developed his passion for fashion design and learnt the art itself since fashion design involves the creation of designs that are meant to have a given impression on a certain group of targeted customers. The political set up of those times also had a massive contribution to his decision to leave psychology and indulge in fashion design. In those days the royal family was most respected and anyone presenting a piece of work pleasant to them was deemed to be a real profession in the concerned field. After designing an aviator Jacket for Stephanie, a member of the royal family, he was filled with a sense of achievement. He thus decided to leave psychology for fashion design. The contribution of the social setting at his home can not be ignored. He used to see his father as an achiever and therefore liked his things. That is why he made Stephanie an aviator jacket. That is, his father had one. His educational knowledge in psychology also had a lot of contribution to the success he saw in the fashion industry. With the understanding of how the human mind functions, he could create designs with the assurance that they would impress his target customers. With his knowledge he could perfectly analyze prevailing trends of fashion and make completely new designs from his analysis of existing ones. This way, his designs always attracted a lot of customers. The preexistent culture of wearing animal skins was a great inspiration to Jitrois. His business has seen unbelievable success attributable to his effort to preserve culture by designing leather garments (Davis 1).
Prominent styles
Jitrois’ passion for leather is evident in most of his designs. Having contributed massively to the refinement of leather for use in designing clothes, Jitrois has created many leather designs. Most of these leather designs are jackets and jeans but there are also leather undergarments, trousers, bags etcetera. Apart from leather, he also uses silk and fur. As stated earlier, the contribution that Jitrois has made in the use of leather in fashion designs is incomparable. He came up with the idea of using python leather in design that has produced the best leather designs ever. He also improvised the chemical refinement of leather to render comfort to leather designs. This led to shocking popularity of leather garments all over the world. For a period of over twenty years, Jean Claude has dressed a lot of famous people including musician Elton John and Princess Caroline of Monaco, who were among his first celebrity customers. These two were informed of his products through word of mouth. He also makes designs that are centered on romance and seduction targeting music celebrities. He won the attention of Celine Dion who he dressed in the music awards that were held in Monaco. Other musicians like Beyonce Knowles and Mary J. Blige are also his customers. That is, they regularly dress his designs. He has also made several spots wear. He has dressed several sports celebrities including: Emmanuel Petit, Claude Makelele, Thierry Henry, Michael Schumacher, Zinedine Zidane etcetera. This strategy by Jitrois to target celebrity that started with Princess Caroline has earned him and his business a lot of fame and success. Recent developments in his passion for leather have enabled him create a leather jean, in different colors, that can be washed with soap and that can also be ironed. Below is a sample of the many designs of Jitrois (Davis 1).
Analysis
Comparison of styles
Jitrois’ designs have many things in common with Brooks’ designs. First of all, an analysis of feminine designs by the two designers reveals a lot of variation in design and intent. Although most of their feminine designs are centered on romance, a lot of other intentions in their designing are evident. There are those that are meant to be comfortable, those that are meant to depict culture while still being romantic; others are meant to be seductive etcetera. These designers are however substantially different. Jitrois tends to target high class clients while Brooks’ designs are meant for middle class. This is evident in the fact that a lot of Jitrois’ designs are based on leather which is normally expensive. As stated above, Jitrois has a lot of leather designs. Thus most of his designs are jeans, trousers and jackets for both women and men. On the other hand, Brook’s designs are mostly feminine and thus her designs are composed with a large number of women trousers, skirts, blouses dresses etc. It can thus be deduced that some Jitrois’ designs are unisex while it is hard to find a unisex design in Brooks’ designs. The establishment Jitrois has in terms of the number of boutiques and retail stores is far better than that of Brook. In a nutshell, Jitrois has been more successful in fashion design than Brooks.
Conclusion
Jitrois and Brooks lived in an era that was very strategic in terms of fashion. Their success can be primarily attributed to the deep passion they had for fashion design and also to the socio-economic and political status that was prevailing at the time of their debut in the fashion industry. A lot of things were working to their advantage and there were many unexploited grounds related to fashion. Despite the fact that fashion has been widely explored, it is normally dependent on cultural, social, political and economic trends and, thus, as long as these trends are unpredictable and new trends appear every day, fashion designs will never be fully explored. There are millions of award winning fashion designs that have not yet been created.
References
Cox, Daniel. “The Toronto New Labels Collections- 2001”. Web.
Davis, Mari. “Jean Claude Jitrois Stretches His Way to the Annals of Fashion”, Fashion Windows, 2009.
Fabian, James. “I Want Jean Claude Jitrois leather pants”. I Want I Got 2009. Web.
Jones, Jen. “Fashion Design”, 2007. Web.
Marilyn Brooks, Marilyn’s News. 2007. Web.
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