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This isn't necessarily a bad thing for fashion. It was a stretch for a designer long respected for career clothes to tout hot pants. The same could be said for the wunderkind doing embellished ballskirts. Now they don't have to. This allows for more creativity, not less. No one has to look alike. No one has to squeeze into an unflattering must-have item just because a few fashion insiders deemed it must have. After years of the industry preaching personal style, it seems it's taking its own advice, and designers seem more concerned with carving out their own look -- and gaining fans of it -- than jumping on an inauthentic trend. Women can approach fashion as if they have options, Zee says. Take colorblocking, for example. "I've said that's a 'trend' for five seasons. This season I'll say it's black and white, and maybe last year I said it was red and pink, but the look hangs out, has a longer life, and that gives you a broader sense of style," Zee says. When tastemakers began touting "personal style," Zee says he's not fully sure they meant it. But say something often enough, and people start believing it. "In the moment maybe it was a marketing ploy," he says, "but then came
'Sex and the City' -- which I think was a tent pole of personal style -- and then the Internet and the popularity of
'street style,' and now I think women are saying, 'I'm going to do what I like to do.'" There's also the importance of value in fashion now, and there's not just a dollar sign attached to that. Quality, heritage and integrity are factors.
Going into 2013, Salzman says consumers have developed a mindset that will focus on a bigger picture than one snapped at the end of a catwalk. "We're going to spend more time thinking about what it means to buy something, and we're much more engaged about what our clothing says as our signature," she says.
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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