When the shop, ‘Sex’, appeared in London, youths of the time went mad, snapping up on a new style especially for the street; ‘Punk!’
From then on, Vivienne Westwood’s idea of fashion became iconic; she created a style that developed itself into a major trend that has defined a decade- thus placing her high on the list of big-name designers; this is just one example of how street style has influenced fashion.
The thing is that, designers must create a product that sells, what the women want!
In a survey conducted by myself, girls claimed to be more influenced by their peers than fashion magazines, and this is a true fact; the best advertisement for style is the street… when I see a woman wearing a fabulous fur coat, I want to look even better, so I run to the shops, purchase a similar coat and dress it up in a personal way.
As the queen, Coco Chanel said, ‘Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening,’ showing that style has a greater importance than the brand of the clothing.
And isn’t that what drives us all to love fashion? The fact that we can portray our own personalities through the vocalization of what we wear!
In the 1960s, the so-called ‘hippy-movement’, saw people travelling to India and bringing back influences from their culture, this created a tidal wave in fashion, seeing more and more people taking inspiration from their friends and strangers that had an amazing sense of style … in the street!
Following this, the feminist outburst in the eighties, was a great contributor to how women dressed through out the decade: the androgynous look, tailored, high-powered image. In this incident, women were echoing the fashions of men, so they could show women can do the same job men do, to the same standard, if not better. This kick-started a big trend amongst the designers and soon saw the androgyny trend hit the shops, therefore hitting the women of the time, even if they were uninterested by the nature of feminism.
Fashion is about personality, you see this everywhere you go, every street, every shop, every person- and like much else in the world- we take inspiration from everything; graffiti, popular television programs and unknown people on the underground.
Love K