Fashion Design Drawing

THE MODERN TREND

To-day we are seeking in our clothes a certain simplicity and directness of effect, which is quite foreign to the old individualist notions of dress. No longer does one wear this or that colour because it is one's own choice; or a large hat or a small hat as one's personal fancy dictates. There is nowadays a certain ideal to which all must conform. This movement expresses itself partly in a new simplicity of line, and partly in the harmony of the details of the dress. Hand-bag, costume, hat, gloves, shoes, scarf, make-up, and coiffure, all must be in tune; and new materials are always being found to exploit this theme.

Yet this movement towards simplicity does not, as might be supposed, make the fashion artist's work any easier. On the contrary, the life and meaning of the figure must be all the better expressed now that it is no longer possible to hide feeble creative work in a mass of heterogeneous trimming. There is much more drawing required to-day.

This is no more than the barest outline of the story of Fashion. The right thing to do for anyone intending to embark on a fashion drawing career is to obtain some standard work on dress and costume, and set out to acquire a more intimate knowledge of the subject. There are many useful books available in the public and subscription libraries, the more important of which are referred to in Appendix I, "Bibliography." Thus not only may her drawing be strengthened with that invaluable quality, knowledge of the subject, which is the background to all good art, but she will obtain an understanding of the true meaning of fashion. With this understanding, one learns to regard fashion not as a capricious, aimless thing, the whimsy of the hour, but as a vital, ever developing function of human life, with purpose and direction, which it is the fashion artist's business to interpret and depict. When one has reached that understanding one has acquired the indescribable fashion sense, hall-mark of the "crack" fashion artist, which enables its possessor to feel and know the trend of fashion even before the first portents are in the air.

When you, gentle reader, have attained to it, you may know that you are on the way to rank with the stars of the world of fashion.