Fashion Terms by Category
Terms of interest to the fashion industry, grouped by topic.
Gain a better understanding of the apparel industry.
The alphabetical directory is the fastest route when you already know the word you are looking for. Categories work the other way: they collect the terms that belong together, so you can explore one corner of the industry at a time and pick up the vocabulary in context. The eight category pages below gather roughly 230 terms between them — the language of making clothing, the labels and materials that go into it, the garments and shoes themselves, the styles they belong to, and the vocabulary of selling clothes and working in the business. Students use these pages to study a topic, and industry readers use them to check the words that come up in their part of the business.
Apparel Manufacturing Terms
The vocabulary of producing clothing, from the cutting room to the final inspection. This category covers the production process step by step — pattern making, marker making, grading, fabric defects and piece goods inspection, in-process quality control and quality assurance, techpacks, size specs and time & action calendars — along with fabric behavior terms such as colorfastness, crocking and bleeding. It is the working language of factories, production departments and product development teams, and a useful study list for anyone sourcing or managing garment manufacturing.
Trimming Terms: Labels, Trims & Notions
"Trimming" is the industry's collective name for the components that finish a garment — the brand labels, hangtags, zippers and similar items also called trims, notions or components. This category covers the trim vocabulary in detail: woven, printed and ECP labels, price tags and joker tickets, ISO and NAFTA care symbols and wash care labels, invisible zippers, garment hangers and VICS hangers, chipboards and tagging tools such as swift tacks. It is the reference list for the small parts that production, packaging and retail teams handle every day.
Fabric, Fiber & Textile Terms
Before a garment is a style, it is a material, and this category covers what clothing is made of. It starts with the fibers themselves — natural fibers, synthetic and man-made fibers — then moves to the performance and functional fabrics engineered to breathe, wick moisture, resist flames or fight odor. Denim and leather get their own group (selvage and raw denim, cable knits, pleather, kip leather), and the page finishes with fabric types, constructions and mill-floor reference terms, from jersey and tulle to color swatches and narrow fabrics. This is the shared vocabulary of textile mills, product developers and quality teams.
Garment & Clothing Type Terms
The names of the things on the hanger. This category organizes the glossary's garment entries by family, starting with the "types of" indexes that compare shirts, pants, T-shirts, collars, necklines and sleeves side by side. From there it runs through jeans and pants (boyfriend jeans, mom jeans, cargo pants, jogger pants, culottes), shirts and tops (crewnecks, turtle necks), dresses and one-piece styles (the little black dress, rompers, shackets), and the specialty garments that cut across the wardrobe, from shapewear to compression clothing. Precise garment names are the working language of product development, retail product pages and resale listings, and this page is where they collect.
Footwear & Shoe Terms
Footwear has its own branch of fashion vocabulary — part anatomy, part sport, part collecting culture — and this category pulls the glossary's shoe entries into one place. It opens with footwear terminology and two types-of-shoes surveys, then covers athletic and specialty shoes (cleats, turf shoes, indoor soccer shoes, skate shoes), and boots, collectibles and seasonal footwear, including boyfriend boots, vintage footwear, collectible sneakers and winter footwear terms. A final group gathers the pages devoted to women's and men's shoes specifically. Anyone who has tried to tell turf shoes from cleats in a sporting-goods store has felt the need for exactly this list.
Fashion Styles, Movements & Subcultures
Some fashion words name garments, but just as many name looks — the style movements and subcultures that decide what those garments mean. This category defines fashion by attitude, era and tribe: style movements and everyday looks such as streetwear, vintage and retro fashion, bohemian style, preppy fashion, athleisure and normcore sit alongside the dark, romantic and costume-inspired styles — goth, grunge, Lolita fashion, steampunk — and the street and skate culture terms. The biggest family here is punk, and all sixteen of the glossary's punk subcategory pages, from anarcho and Celtic punk to psychobilly and skate punk, are collected on this page. Designers mine these movements for collections, retailers use them to name departments, and vintage sellers rely on them to describe pieces.
Retail & Merchandising Terms
Every garment that gets made eventually has to get sold, and this category is the vocabulary of the selling half of the industry — how clothing moves from a designer's line sheet into stores and shopping carts. The terms are grouped by the job they do: retail math, planning and merchandising (retail math, assortment planning, inventory management), store formats and selling channels (department store terminology, outlet stores, brick-and-mortar and omnichannel retail), wholesale and private label (clothing wholesalers, market week), selling events, resale and social selling (sample sales, trunk shows, pop-up retail, consignment, thrift shops), and shoppers, service and returns (drop shipping, chargebacks, store returns). Merchandisers, retail buyers, store managers and e-commerce teams use these words daily.
Fashion Jobs Terms
Employment terminology for the clothing industry: the words used in fashion careers, job descriptions and hiring. This category points to the language of fashion job descriptions, employment agencies and fashion recruiters, interviewing for a career in fashion, and the fashion intern — plus career resources such as fashion job search sites and apparel jobs listings. It is aimed at students planning a first step into the industry, professionals changing roles, and employers writing the job posts everyone else reads.
OK, it is true. Eight categories still do not cover every term in the glossary, and they are not meant to. These are the groupings where enough related terms had collected to make a page of their own worthwhile. If the word you are looking for is not in a category yet, it is still in the alphabetical directory — and if more clusters of terms build up over time, more categories can follow.
By the way, you really should also check out our clothing definitions section and our apparel glossary. Those sections contain totally different information and may be of interest to you.