Ready-to-wear
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- "Prêt-à-Porter" redirects here. For the movie Prêt-à-Porter (English title: Ready to Wear), see Prêt-à-Porter (film).
Ready-to-wear or prêt-à-porter is the fashion design term for clothing marketed in a finished condition, in standard clothing sizes (in casual usage, off the rack or "off-the-peg"). Some fashion houses or fashion designers create ready-to-wear lines that are mass-produced and industrially manufactured, while others offer lines that are very exclusive and produced only in limited numbers and only for a limited time. Whatever the quantity produced, these lines are never one of a kind.
The antithesis of ready-to-wear is different depending on whether it concerns women's or men's fashion. In women's fashion high-end clothing made partly incorporating features requested by the client and to her exacting measurements is called haute couture. In menswear, it is usually called bespoke. Savile Row is a famous street in London legendary for its bespoke tailoring, but Naples, Rome and Milan are also famous for their exclusive bespoke tailors. Some high end makers of exclusive men's ready-to-wear clothing such as Kiton, Oxxford Clothes, and Cesare Attolini also provide a bespoke service. Some makers of exclusive high-end ready-to-wear men's shoes (most famously John Lobb & G.J.Cleverley London) also make bespoke shoes on lasts custom made to fit the wearer's foot exactly, with premium leathers and high-end construction methods. Charvet in Paris is an example of a famous men's shirtmaker which offers both a high-end ready-to-wear as well as bespoke service.
Fashion houses that produce a women's haute couture line, such as Chanel, Dior, and Lacroix or Torrente by Julien Fournié, also produce a ready-to-wear line, which returns a greater profit due to the higher volume turnover of garments and greater availability of the clothing. Relative to couture, ready-to-wear clothing is often more practical and informal, though this may not always be the case. The construction of ready-to-wear clothing is also held to different standard than that of haute couture due to its industrial nature. High-end ready-to-wear lines are sometimes based upon a famous gown or pattern that is then duplicated to raise the designer's visibility level.
Ready-to-wear collections are usually presented by fashionable couture houses each season during a period known as Fashion Week. This takes place on a city-wide basis and occurs twice per year. Collections for autumn/winter are shown early in the year, usually around February, and spring/summer collections are shown around September. Ready-to-wear fashion weeks occur separately and earlier than those of haute couture. Paris, London, Milan and New York, are home to the world's most famed fashion weeks, but many other major cities such as Los Angeles and Tokyo hold Fashion Weeks that are both highly-anticipated and well-publicised. Many couture houses also present menswear at fashion shows, but the more high-end exclusive men's ready-to-wear makers such as Kiton, Brioni, Cesare Attolini, and Borrelli largely eschew this practice and instead concentrate on use intricate handwork and ultrafine fabrics along with their exclusivity to promote themselves. The end result is a ready-to-wear suit that costs as much or more than many independent tailors charge for a full bespoke suit.
