#pleat-tape

#pleat-tape

Ian Berry's Secret Garden, constructed entirely from recycled denim, showcases the innovative use of materials in textile art, emphasizing sustainability and creativity.

Washi, because of its quality and texture, offers something not just tactile but psychologically soothing. It's about one-third the weight of cotton, light, breathable and dry to the touch.

Emily Porter found a woven sweater labeled 'Maria Rodriguez Chicago' at a resale shop, highlighting the significance of local designers in Chicago's fashion history.

The question of how fashion is archived - what enters the museum; what is deemed worthy of preservation; whose clothes are considered culturally significant enough to outlast the bodies that wore them - has long sat uneasily at the centre of fashion history itself. Institutions have tended to answer it, or ignore it, in much the same way: couture gowns under glass, luxury garments mounted on conservation-grade mannequins in blockbuster exhibitions - an implicit hierarchy of the designed over the worn, the authored over the anonymous.

Fashion and dress in Mesopotamia - clothing, footwear, and accessories - were not only functional but defined one's social status and developed from a simple loincloth in the Ubaid period (circa 6500-4000 BCE) to brightly colored robes and dresses by the time of the Sassanian Empire (224-651). Styles changed, but the essential form and function remained the same. As in any civilization, the upper class and nobility wore more expensive clothes of higher quality.

Wall Street's tailors keep New York City's financiers looking sharp and professional. Some have been tailors most of their lives, while others are comparatively new to the trade. Here's an inside look at the businesses that dress Wall Street.

Embroidery is a historic mainstay of traditional clothing in Asia or the Middle East, as well as Western Haute Couture, but it is increasingly present in Paris, Milan or New York on modern men's shirts, bomber jackets or blazers. Designers at Dior, Dolce Gabbana, Kenzo or Gucci have adopted it in recent runway shows, while Louis Vuitton's celebrity rapper-designer Pharell Williams dedicated his entire June collection to India after visiting the country.

In the show, "dirty" extends to anything that breaks fashion's pact with propriety. Here are clothes caked in grime, blotted with makeup, stiffened by salt, pieced from trash, frayed, and faded. The garments span decades, from the 1980s through the mid-2000s, when the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier built their fame on defying convention, to today, when corporatization has made such daring increasingly rare. But forgoing practicality frees certain designers from the demands that the body be polite-and thereby policed.

Getting dressed shouldn't feel like a daily obstacle course, but if you've ever battled a loose button or a hem that just won't cooperate, you know the struggle is real. That's where these low-key genius clothing hacks come in. Think: tiny tools and brilliant fixes that make your clothes actually work for you. These all solve those oddly specific wardrobe problems you didn't even realize had such easy fixes. Scroll on for more.