Fashion Designers Of America

Versace, Gucci, Prada ... the names that we hear announced as models walk down the runway are all too often Italian names or the names of other designers who have made their careers in Europe. There is no denying that there are amazing fashion designers in Italy and throughout the rest of Europe. But it shouldn't go unnoticed that there are also some really amazing - and well-known - fashion designers working right here in the United States.

Here is a brief look at five of the best American fashion designers:

1.    Marc Jacobs is a fashion designer who is well-known for his work with the French fashion house Louis Vuitton. However, Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer who has produced lines of clothing out of New York which are well-respected in the industry. The fact that he's gone international just points to the truth that there are some great American Designers.

2.    Vera Wang is an American fashion designer who is best known for her wedding dress collections. Hers is the kind of name that gets regularly mentioned in pop culture (thinkSex and the City or Lipstick Jungle and you'll think Vera Wang). She is also embedded in the culture of Hollywood because of the fact that she has made wedding dresses for a number of celebrities including Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez and Sharon Stone.

3.    Oscar de la Renta is one of those fashion designers that many people have no idea where he came from. He was originally born in the Dominican Republic and he has worked in fashion design all over the world. He is famous for some of the fashion design work that he did throughout Europe. However, if you have to get down to the basics, he is actually an American designer since his citizenship is here.

4.    Calvin Klein is a brand name that has changed a lot of the years. It was first launched as a line of coats for both men and women. It became famous as a brand of jeans that were high-end and oh-so-hot. And these days when you look at a Calvin Klein billboard you are probably going to see a super attractive model in Calvin Klein underwear. Throughout all of these changes, Calvin Klein has remained an American brand name.

5.    Kate Spade is one of the trendiest young designers out there. She is best known for her line of handbags but what is really cool about Kate Spade is that she's got accessories and raincoats and personal organizers and makeup and even a home furnishings collections. She's a do-it-all kind of gal for those DIY girls out there. And she was born in Middle America, working now out of New York.

History Of American Fashion

History of American Fashion

The clothes we wear and the trends we follow are often associated with superficiality and materialism. Fleeting styles come rapidly into vogue, then disappear as quickly as they came. But fashion has always been intrinsically connected to deeper elements of the American experience, from the economy and labor system to culture, religion, and class. From our underwear to our Levi's to our sneakers, what we wear has, for centuries, spoken volumes about who we are, what we do, and what we want. Whether Americans have dressed to make a political statement, to assert their class status, or simply to be irreverent, every style has carried a certain social meaning. This is in part because our culture has long ascribed great significance to individuals' public image, and because image has long been intertwined with the American Capilist Economy. As Mark Twain once wrote, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."¹ Then again, Twain never lived to see the rise of Playboy. Clothes—or the lack thereof—remain central to contemporary American culture and integral to our national history.

Why Should I Care?

Whether you've argued with your parents or friends about what you wear, or cringed as you gaze at old pictures of yourself in ones-trendy styles, or judged another person by his or her choice of clothes, you know that fashion matters in our day-to-day lives. Terms like white collar and blue collar connote not just a line of work but a person's class status, and remind us that we tend to make assumptions about a person's income, line of work, and social position based on the way he or she dresses. Fashion history also extends beyond the economics of designer profits and class systems; issues of gender, power, and sexuality all intersect with the clothes we wear. Many people judge a woman’s sexuality and values by the way that she dresses; if her clothes are deemed too revealing or flashy, she might be called a "ho." Regardless of how exaggerated or contrived these presumptions might be, they continue to pervade our popular culture and influence the way that we present ourselves in public and even in private. Even society's mavericks—the goths garbed in black, the hippies with long hair and natural clothing, the nudists—all indicate the importance of appearances and perceptions by dressing (or not dressing) in order to make a point about who they are and what they think of social conventions.

Whether you are a slave to fashion trends or proud to flout them, you are about to embark upon a history that is about much more than evanescent vogues and high-priced brand names; this is the story of class, race, sex, politics, big business, and popular culture, a story spun through the clothes we wear.

Latest American Dresses