Ready-to-Wear

Fashion Design

Clothing Model   Fashion Calendar

Standard Sizes Are the Whole Idea

Everything in ready-to-wear follows from two decisions: the garment is finished before it is sold, and it is made in standard sizes. A finished garment can be stocked, shipped, displayed and bought on the spot, which is what makes department stores, boutiques, mail order and online retail possible. Standard sizes make that stock predictable. A maker can grade a pattern across a size range, cut many garments at once, and know that a customer who wears one size in a line can buy another piece in the same size with reasonable confidence. The trade-offs are built in and worth naming. Fit is approximate by design, so alteration remains a normal part of buying better clothing. Design must survive industrial manufacture, so construction that depends on hours of hand finishing for a single client has to be rethought in operations a factory can repeat accurately.

Those constraints shaped modern fashion rather than limiting it. Because a ready-to-wear garment is reproduced, its design can be judged by many wearers instead of one, and a successful style can be re-cut in new colours and fabrics. Because it is sold in competition with other finished garments at a stated price, its value is tested openly. The designer's skill moves partly from fitting an individual body to anticipating many bodies, many budgets and many occasions at once, which is a different and in some ways harder discipline than couture.

The Two Ends of Ready-to-Wear

Ready-to-wear is a method of production and sale, not a price level, and its range is wide. At one end, fashion houses and designers create lines that are mass-produced and industrially manufactured, sold in large quantities at prices set by factory cost and retail competition. At the other end, lines are still very exclusive, produced only in limited numbers and only for a limited time, priced by scarcity and by the name on the label. Both are ready-to-wear because both are finished and sized in advance. Confusing the category with cheapness is the common error. A limited designer line and a mass-market line share a system, not a standard of cloth, construction or design.

Designer ready-to-wear also serves as the commercial engine of houses known for couture. A famous gown creates the image; the ready-to-wear line based on that gown or pattern is what most customers can actually buy, and duplicating it raises the designer's visibility far beyond the small circle of couture clients. Fashion weeks reflect the division, with pret-a-porter weeks devoted to the collections stores will stock. Buyers attending them are not choosing unique pieces for individuals. They are choosing size ranges, quantities and delivery dates, which is the point at which a design becomes a product.

Ready-to-Wear and the Customer

For the wearer, ready-to-wear changed the relationship between clothing and time. A couture garment required fittings and waiting; a ready-to-wear garment can be bought for an occasion this week. It also changed the relationship between clothing and identity. When many people can buy the same well-designed garment, distinction moves from having a design no one else has to how a garment is chosen, fitted, combined and worn, which is the ground on which personal style operates. Understanding the term therefore matters beyond vocabulary. It names the system in which nearly all clothing is now designed, manufactured, marketed and bought, and the contrast with haute couture explains both the prestige of the one-of-a-kind garment and the reach of the duplicated one.