Fashion Victim

The fashion industry is huge, from those who work in your local Primark to the creative directors and fashion designers of the most well known luxury brands. Its not surprising then that its the second biggest industry in Europe. I'm not alone in noticing though how it seems to just keep getting bigger and bigger. A few years ago there was no store like Primark, offering ridiculously cheap, throw away fashion. If it was cheap it was completely dated, bad fitting and ugly. Suddenly most of the stores on the High Street can keep up with the fashion designers showing at Fashion Week. In the past most people shopped on the High Street because they couldn't afford the high-end clothes. Now the High Street is a shopping destination in itself. With fashion designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella Macartney, Roberto Cavalli, Emma Cook and Giles Deacon having all designed lines for High Street stores, lines that are priced the same as the other products in the store. Celebrities are now joining in on the act as well, it seems there are very few celebs who don't have their own line. Some of them, like Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B line, are more fashion forward, stylish and worth investing in, others like lines by the girls who star in reality show, The Hills, just aren't even worth mentioning.

No matter where you look fashion is there, it's even invading the televison. After the Clothes Show disappeared, (a programme I loved growing up), there really wasn't another programme looking at the world of fashion in any way. There might have been the odd documentry on a particular part of the fashion world, but the magazine style show had disappeared. Suddenly there's several cropping up, again the standard is varied. There are more fashion magazines, several glossy weeklies along with all the monthlies that have been around for years. You can't even go for your weekly food shop without seeing fashion, as all the major supermarkets have there own clothing lines now.

Now I'm not complaining or anything, after all this is the industry I want to work in so the bigger it gets the more jobs there are. Also if the standard of the High Street is high it means there is so much more choice and it makes shopping even more fun. What I can't help wondering though is; how far is this going to go and how long for?
With all the recent financial problems there have been, even the cheaper side of fashion might seem like a rather frivolous thing to be spending your money on. Even if that's not the case and people still spend money on clothes to help them forget about the stresses of life, surely there are only so many magazines and T.V shows that we can be bothered with. Over saturation of any market allows the consumer to be picky about how and where they spent their time and money. Fashion is an industry that in difficult times still continues to grow and at the moment is showing no signs of stopping. But you only have to look at the music industry to see how things can change. There have been several music retailers facing reduced profits or just folding altogether in recent years as they struggled to compete with online home delivery or downloading sites. With more and more fashion stores having websites and great online stores like asos.com and net-a-porter, surely at some point there has to be a victim. As much as it's great to see the industry grow and expand there has to be a saturation point and I can't help but worry what will happen then. In the meantime though I'm just gonna put on my Giles Deacon for New Look tee and my Emma Cook for Topshop boots and say a little prayer to the fashion gods that things level out. Cause where we are right now is pretty damn good.