Although the fashion and apparel sectors are identified together, historically they have not necessarily been so closely aligned. The fashion industry centered on haute couture that catered to an aristocratic and rarefied clientele, while the apparel industry was dedicated to mass production and more attuned to practicality and saleability than to fashion trends. The modern fashion industry began in eighteenth century France and produced fine clothes for the royal court. By the late nineteenth century, Paris was firmly established as the fashion capital of the world, and the styles that emerged from it dictated women’s fashions in the United States, which gained information on styles to copy through fashion magazines and fashion dolls. Although there were various movements to counter the appeal of Parisian fashion and promote a similar American style, the Parisian couture industry remained the unchallenged arbiter of style into the first half of the twentieth century.
The United States thus had an apparel manufacturing industry well in advance of its fashion industry, but even this industry was relatively late in emerging. Until the invention of the sewing machine, nearly all garments were home-produced, and mass production was limited to the very cheap work clothes manufactured in “slop shops” for sailors, laborers, and enslaved individuals. Mass production of more tailored clothing began with uniforms during the Civil War and with it the introduction of standardized sizes, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that clothing manufacturing achieved its familiar form. Even then, mass manufacture of clothing was initially limited to menswear, because men’s garments were easier to standardize, while women’s clothing continued to be made either at home or to individual order.
The mass manufacture of women’s clothing began with outer garments, such as cloaks, that were relatively easy to standardize and soon expanded to include blouses, skirts, and corsets. By the turn of the twentieth century, the American apparel manufacturing industry was well established, and as it grew, the labor it required became increasingly segmented and unskilled. Many immigrants, primarily Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe, worked in the clothing industry. A number of them rose to become manufacturers. Many other immigrant clothing workers, however, struggled to achieve decent pay and working conditions, and clothing unions were born in response to the industry’s labor problems. Manufacturers attempted to evade unionization by moving production out of the northern cities and eventually overseas.
The simplification of styles between the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century was gradual and influenced by designers such as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel and movements that included the introduction of sportswear and the “California look.” World War II further loosened the French grip on fashion trendsetting, and restrictions on use of cloth inspired an increased level of simplicity in design during the war years. Even so, by the war’s end, the more elaborate French-inspired styles of the “New Look” regained popularity, and Paris still maintained influence into the 1960s with the aid of celebrity style-setters, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis . The central role of haute couture in the fashion industry finally came to an end in the late 1960s, when the youth counterculture movement and accompanying “street fashion” became incorporated into the apparel industry. From the 1960s into the twenty-first century, the fashion and apparel industry became increasingly internationalized, with major fashion centers emerging in New York, Italy, and Japan. Apparel production likewise became internationalized, as manufacturing increasingly moved to locations in the developing world (Source: EBSCO, 2024).