Here Are 3 Commonly Misused Fashion Words – Frills, A-Line, Colour Blocking

Knowing the proper way to infuse certain fashion words into your business goes a long way in creating a lasting impression for clients or potential investors. Shuffling a range of words interchangeably not only shows that a designer is well-versed in fashion, but also up-to-date.

Knowing how to use words like smocking, napping, bespoke, look books, and many more are some of the words we have intricately taken a look at in this segment.

So, as a fashion designer, when should you use words like frills and A-line? And what does the concept of colour blocking entail? Let’s take a look at them!

Frills

Frills, in fashion designing, is a strip of gathered or pleated material sewn onto a garment or larger pieces of material as a decorative edging or ornament, to add more style to the outfit. In recent times, fashion designers have honed their creativity into designing outfits with different fabrics thus creating a mélange, deconstructed outfits, or outfits that do not simply follow the regular trend of fashion, and adding frills to an outfit, though not necessary, gives it an edge.

Dating back to centuries ago, frills on outfits have always been an important element of costume decoration, as they demonstrated the attitude of aristocracy and luxury. Frills essentially add to an outfit or ensemble the feminine and chic look because of the method in which it is folded delicately.

A-Line

An A-line is a concept used to describe a skirt, dress, or jacket with a triangular silhouette, that is, narrow and fitted at the top, and widening out from the waist in a straight line to the hem. During the drawing or illustration process of fashion designing, a line is one of the most basic concepts of geometry. It is used in clever ways by designers to present their concepts in many innovative and creative ways.

First used by the French designer, Christian Dior, in 1955, the A-line trend was revived in the 20th century as they were used to design more skirts and dresses then, as opposed to the conventional straight skirts and dresses.

Colour Blocking

Colour blocking is when different outfits with opposing colours on the colour wheel are paired together to make an interesting and complementary colour combination. The trend became popular in this century as many people were seeing mixing outfits with solid colours to create a striking statement. 

Fashion designers harnessed the power of this trend to create outfits, like dresses, skirts, and many more with hyper-saturated colours on the wheel to have sharp looks.

How These Words Should Be Used

Whether on shirts, jumpsuits, or dresses, if the material isn’t pleated to add an extra stylish look to the outfit, it shouldn’t be considered as frills. Designers can use this fabric manipulation to their advantage to create dainty and special pieces.

Typically, an A-line outfit has no visible embellishments for ease, such as pleats or slits. And a popular style of wedding dress, which is fitted above and around the hips but flares gently to the hem is a typical example of an A-line dress. So if the outfit doesn’t give the shape of a capital letter ‘A’, it is not an A-line outfit.

Combining outfit colours such as pink and orange, or red and purple is regarded as colour blocking. On the other hand, wearing neutral or monochrome colours with little or no burst of colours is not regarded as colour blocking.

These are some of the words that you can infuse as a fashion entrepreneur in your business this week and a much longer time!