A fashion capital is a city with major influence on the international fashion scene, from history, heritage, designers, trends, and styles, to manufacturing innovation and retailing of fashion products, including events such as fashion weeks, fashion council awards, and trade fairs that together, generate significant economic output.
Haute couture fashion models walk the runway during New York Fashion Week.
A 2010 Milan Fashion Week event
Berlin Fashion Week in 2013. Berlin has returned to being a fashion capital after the German reunification.
New York's Garment District, 1955
Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into outfits that depict distinctive ways of dressing as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. As a multifaceted term, fashion describes an industry, styles, aesthetics, and trends.
Minidress by John Bates, 1965
Woman's Bicycling Ensemble, 1898, LACMA
Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, was a leader of fashion. Her choices, such as this 1783 white muslin dress called a chemise a la Reine, were highly influential and widely worn.
Albrecht Dürer's drawing contrasts a well-turned out bourgeoise from Nuremberg (left) with her counterpart from Venice. The Venetian lady's high chopines make her look taller.
