Fashion refers to the styles and customs prevalent at a particular time, what is famous according to fashion experts at that given time. When the word “fashion” is used commonly however, it describes the popular clothing style. Many fashions are popular in many cultures at any given time. Important is the idea that the course of design and fashion will change more rapidly than the culture as a whole. Different Fashion designers creates and produces different clothing articles.

The terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" were used to describe whether someone or something fits in with the current or even not so current, popular mode of expression. The term "fashion" is frequently used in a positive sense, as a glamour, beauty and style. In this sense, fashions are a sort of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty and goodness.

Though colors and patterns of textiles changed from year to year, the cut of a gentleman's coat and the length of his waist coat, or the pattern to which a lady's dress was cut changed more slowly. Men's fashions largely derived from military models. Although tailors and dressmakers were no doubt responsible for many innovations before, and the textile industry certainly led many trends, the history of fashion design is normally taken to date from 1858, when the English-born Charles Frederick Worth opened the first true haute couture house in Paris. Since then the professional designer has become a progressively more dominant figure, despite the origins of many fashions in street fashion.