Haute couture in the context of "Sew"

A fashion capital is a city with major influence on the international fashion scene, from history, heritage, designers, trends, and styles, to manufacturing innovation and retailing of fashion products, including events such as fashion weeks, fashion council awards, and trade fairs that together, generate significant economic output.

With exquisite fashion heritage, structured organization, and the most vaunted fashion designers of the 20th century, four cities are considered the main fashion capitals of the 21st century. Called the Big Four, the most prominent fashion capitals of the world—in chronological order of their eponymous fashion weeks, are New York City, London, Milan, and Paris, which receive most media coverage.

In sociology, distinction is a social force whereby people use various strategies—consciously or not—to differentiate and distance themselves from others in society, and to assign themselves greater value in the process. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction, 1979), Pierre Bourdieu described how those in power define aesthetic concepts like "good taste", with the consequence that the social class of a person tends to predict and in fact determine his or her cultural interests, likes, and dislikes.

Political and socio-economic, racial and gender distinctions, based upon social class, are reinforced in daily life within society. In The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed (2004), Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter describe "distinction" as a social competition in which the styles of social fashion are in continual development, and that the men and women who do not follow the development of social trends soon become stale, and irrelevant to their social-class stratum.

Sewing is the craft of fastening pieces of textiles together using a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, originating in the Paleolithic era. Archaeological evidence suggests that early humans in Europe and Asia produced garments from fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.

For thousands of years, all sewing was done by hand. The sewing machine which was invented in the 19th century enabled mechanized stitching, and the mass production of garments expanded in the 20th century. Hand sewing remains common in high-quality tailoring, haute couture fashion, and custom dressmaking, and is practiced by both textile artists and hobbyists as a means of creative expression.

Color is an important aspect to the aesthetic of clothing. The color of clothing has a significant impact on one's appearance and influences the perception towards the wearer, especially concerning their socio-economic standing.

"Macaroni" (formerly spelled "maccaroni") was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of 18th-century Britain. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually epicene and androgynous manner. The term "macaroni" pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of high-end clothing, fastidious eating, and gambling. He mixed Continental affectations with his British nature, like a practitioner of macaronic verse (which mixed English and Latin to comic effect), laying himself open to satire.

The macaronis became seen in stereotyped terms in Britain, being seen as a symbol of inappropriate bourgeois excess, effeminacy, and possible homosexuality – which was then legally viewed as sodomy. At the time, homosexuality was frowned upon, and was even punishable by death. Many modern critics view the macaroni as representing a general change in 18th-century British society such as political change, class consciousness, new nationalisms, commodification, and consumer capitalism. The macaroni was the Georgian era precursor to the dandy of the Regency and Victorian eras.

Paris Fashion Week (French: Semaine de la mode de Paris, commonly [la] Fashion Week) is a series of designer presentations held semi-annually in Paris, France, with spring/summer and autumn/winter events held each year. Dates are determined by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Paris Fashion Week is held at venues throughout the city. It is one of the "Big Four" fashion weeks alongside New York, Milan, and London.

In addition to ready-to-wear shows, there are men's and haute couture shows; these are held semiannually for the spring/summer and autumn/winter seasons. The haute couture collections are always presented and exhibited before the ready-to-wear collections, with there being a total of a little over 100 collections each season. Also, every year, famous brands like Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Kenzo, Givenchy, and Céline host their shows in historical places such as the Carrousel du Louvre and the Grand Palais.

Sportswear, in the context of fashion, sometimes called athleisure, is a style of dress that has its roots in the athletic apparel traditionally worn by sportsmen and women, but which has since evolved to become a broad and globally recognisable genre of fashion. Its popularity stems from a combination of comfort, practicality, and a distinctive visual identity. Typical garments include hoodies, tracksuits, leggings, sweatshirts, and sneakers, often featuring prominent manufacturer branding.

The term originated in America, and at first was used to describe separate jacket and trousers worn rather than a full men's suit. Since the 1930s it referred to day and evening fashions of varying degrees of formality that demonstrate a specific relaxed approach to their design, while remaining appropriate for a wide range of social occasions. The term predated activewear (clothing designed specifically for participants in sporting pursuits), but the two terms are now often used synonymously. Although sports clothing was available from European haute couture houses and "sporty" garments were increasingly worn as everyday or informal wear, the early American sportswear designers were associated with ready-to-wear manufacturers. While most fashions in America in the early 20th century were directly copied from, or influenced heavily by Paris, American sportswear became a home-grown exception to this rule, and could be described as the American Look. Sportswear was designed to be easy to look after, with accessible fastenings that enabled a modern emancipated woman to dress herself without a maid's assistance.

The Bold and the Beautiful (often referred to as B&B) is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. It premiered on March 23, 1987, as a sister show to the Bells' other soap opera The Young and the Restless; several characters from each of the two shows have crossed over to the other since the early 1990s. Set in Los Angeles, California, the show centers upon the Forrester family and their haute couture business.

The program features an ensemble cast, headed by its longest-serving actors John McCook as Eric Forrester and Katherine Kelly Lang as Brooke Logan. Since its premiere, the show has become the most-watched soap in the world, with an audience of an estimated 26.2 million viewers. As of 2010, it continued to hold on to the second-place position in weekly Nielsen Ratings for daytime dramas. The Bold and the Beautiful has also won 77 Daytime Emmy Awards, including three Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Tiffany & Co. (colloquially known as Tiffany's) is an American luxury jewelry and specialty design house headquartered on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Tiffany is known for its luxury goods, particularly its sterling silver and diamond jewelry. These goods are sold at Tiffany stores, online, and through corporate merchandising. Its name and branding are licensed to Coty for fragrances and to Luxottica for eyewear.

Tiffany & Co. was founded in 1837 by the jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany and became famous in the early 20th century under the artistic direction of his son Louis Comfort Tiffany. In 2018, net sales totaled US$4.44 billion. As of 2023, Tiffany operated over 300 stores globally, in many countries including the United States, Japan, and Canada, as well as Europe, Latin America, and the collective Asia-Pacific region, and is exploring opportunities in Africa. The company's product line features fine jewelry, sterling silver, watches, porcelain, crystal, stationery, haute couture fragrance and personal accessories, and leather goods.