Purchasing high-end and luxury fashion items has always been fabulous. Being able to wear the globe’s leading and most innovative designs by world-class designers that have featured their work in the fashion capitals of the world such Paris, New York and Milan is incredibly satisfying and can give you that confidence you need to take on your day. The downside of this has always been store accessibility because in the past, if you didn’t live in a large city, these labels and brands were almost impossible to come by. Today, your geographic location need not matter in your quest to gain a fabulous wardrobe. There is a place where these high fashion pieces are readily available to you and that place is online.
The fashion industry has existed for thousands of years, since ancient civilisation. However, it has become dominant in modern-day culture since industrialisation occurred in the 1800s, which meant with the assistance of machinery, we were able to produce a larger quantity of clothing and with more variation. Since then, fashion has evolved to become more diverse in its style, use of fabrics, body-shape, and design. As society has developed, so has the fashion that the population desires, especially within the LGBT world which has allowed us to forget about gender stereotypes and look at fashion in a more androgynous light.
As the fashion industry has progressed, different influences have emerged with the introduction of new technologies. There are magazines and designers all telling us what to wear and how to look amazing. Fashion journalism is a key influencer in modern-day fashion and now that these once paper-based magazines have moved online, so has our ability to shop within the same cyber-space for these high-end pieces. Our favourite celebrities are photographed walking down glamorous red carpets in designs and brands that are easily available to us, easier than ever before due to the globalisation of technology.
Before this technology had been invented, going back to as recently as the 1990s, an individual’s ability to access world class designers depended on their geographic location. Unless you were able to get down to Fifth Avenue or Carnaby Street, your options were limited. Even if you were lucky enough to live in a city, limited storage space would mean that there would be a minimal amount of designers work on offer. If you lived elsewhere, you’d have to wait for the designs to trickle down through the city boutiques and into your local department store. Twenty five years on, this is far from the case. With new online high-fashion utopias, such as Ssense, those who find themselves on isolated pacific islands can now buy whatever fashion they choose, as long as there is internet connection of course.
These fantastic online marketplaces have paved the way for everyone with an interest in fashion to be part of a revolutionary process – online shopping. Online stores enable us to have more choice and due to the decreased rent and utility costs, it means that this vast amount of extra choice now available also becomes cheaper. It’s only been 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web available to the public, but in that time, the internet has already become an integral part of everyday life for most of the world’s population. In 2016, over 50% of the world’s population owned smartphones and with the app store and similar inventions, the luxury-fashion market has been opened up even more so and we’re all able and should benefit from it. From Givenchy to Versace, it’s time to get shopping.
