Random Fashion Buzzword Generator

Fashion lingo is something of a minefield for most of us. Unless your name is Anna Wintour how can you be expected to know what a ‘chunky palladium boot’ is supposed to look like? 

If you find it difficult to understand some of the words commonly used within the fashion industry, you surely will have fun playing with this random fashion text generator!

Fashion lingo reflects the joyous nature of fashion

My fav lexicographer Erin McKean (that I had the pleasure to interview) interviewed by the fashion blog: The Fashionspot, gives her take on how bloggers are affecting everyday jargon, whether "arm party" might ever make it into a legitimate dictionary.

In the interview, Erin provides some of the main features of fashion lingo:

• The use of the fashion singular "They're showing a great pastel stingray-leather shoe for spring"  or "This designer has a way with a pant that other designers can only envy."
• Overuse of the superlative everything is amazing, superb, fantastic, gorgeous, fabulous, delightful.

Full interview available on Fashion Jargon - A tFS Interview with Wordsmith Erin McKean

Fashion terminology is DEF ahhhmazing!

Fashion terminology has a twin-nature: extremely accurate and specific when dealing with clothing from a technical point of view; merry and creative on fashion blogs and magazines.

Technical-field terminology (production materials and machinery, as well as standard kinds of clothes) has three main characteristics: precision, auto-referentiality and transparency.

Fashion terminology on fashion blogs and magazines combines instead, a lot of wordplays, acronyms and abbreviations (for instance: LBD, standing for Little Black Dress). Fashion terminology mixes also words from different languages and literature language with everyday slang.

By playing with terms, synonyms and sounds of words, fashion language faces an endless challenge: it is a battlefield for bloggers and journalists for a challenge to the latest neologism. The ever changing nature of fashion terminology depends actually on the influence of new coinages.

"Every girl needs a black leather skirt. Step it up this season with an architectural shoe. Nothing screams military chic like skinny cargo pants with a pair of beautiful camo-print ballet flats. Want to look as effortlessly cool as Rachel Bilson? Try a tribal-inspired hobo bag with a retro mini. For night, go luxe with a glam gown, but add unexpected accessories, like a splash of leopard print.Totally surreal."

(Excerpt from Toronto Standard)

Since the middle ‘60s – with a spike in the ‘80s – fashion terminology has always been getting richer, in line with a tendency to foster a global trade and new fashion trends. Now, fashion bloggers are having more an influence than ever, because they democratize the reporting of fashion.

Source: Smartling Fashion Terminology Timeline

How do new fashion words make it into dictionaries? The process occurs in two different ways:

• ‘Trickle-down’. According to theories dating back to the end of 19^th century, the fashion world is a ‘top-down-trickle’: new words (associated with new trends) spread from the top to the bottom layers of society.
• ‘Bubble up’. New words come from the lowest layers of society and ‘boom’ up to the top layers. 

The main features of fashion terminology are:

• ‘Useless’ words are left out: they can somehow slow-down the communication (namely prepositions, conjunctions, articles and so on).
• Brevity of expression: “–able”- suffixed adjectives (fashionable, wearable) are used to avoid subordinate relative clauses.
• Pre-modification: this is done by using stacked-noun-phrases – with or without hyphen, where verbs inflected for their present participle play the role of adjectives or object complements (for instance: Camo-print) – or several ‘base words’ within a single syntagm that are easily comprehended by the right recipients when placed in the right context (for instance:  tribal-inspired hobo bag ).
• Nominalisation: using a noun instead of a verb to give expression to a concept being associated with a certain deed.
• Vocabulary density: smaller number of verbs and a higher number of nouns, directly resulting from nominalisation.  Periods are more simplified, since principal clauses with scanty subordinates or trailing elements take preference over complex sentences. The periods are long, sometimes even longer than in typical language. Anyway, "stretchable" rules exist where special requirements lead to “inconsistency and conflict with general language rules”. 
• Verbs: are very often inflected in their – ing form and passive forms.
• Impersonalisation: 1^st singular person is avoided.
• The use of the fashion singular:  "They're showing a great pastel stingray-leather shoe for spring"  or "This designer has a way with a pant that other designers can only envy."
•  Overuse of the superlative:  everything is amazing, superb, fantastic, gorgeous, fabulous, delightful.

source: http://hudabeauty.com/

Sources: 

• Smartling Fashion Terminology timeline
• Fashion lingo reflects the joyous nature of fashion
• Fashion Lingo: terminologia per fashion blogger
• Said Language to Fashion: OMG I Die

Bronde

Bronde: Blend of "brown" and "blonde", golden brown hair with super-subtle highlights.

Source: Is Bronde the Next Must-Have Hair Color Phenomenon?

Tweet riguardo #bronde

Power Brow

Recent beauty trend based on creating a fuller, thicker eyebrow shapes (like Cara Delevingne).

This trend first became popular in Autumn/Winter 08, today models such as Cara Delevingne are showcasing defined, thick eyebrow on the catwalk. 

The term has been created by Benefit UK head makeup artist and brow expert Lisa Potter-Dixon of the Cara-inspired beauty trend cosmetics. 

First born as a recession-savvy solution for who couldn’t afford going to waxers or pluckers frequently, bold eyebrows are now the surprisingly beauty trends of this year. In fact, the popularity of the strong brow has translated into big gains for beauty companies: eyebrow makeup is indeed the fastest-growing category of eye makeup in 2014. Anastasia Beverly Hills Cosmetics made a name for itself in the eyebrow sphere and is now the bestselling eyebrow makeup brand in the U.S.

This trend has been called also "Delevingne-ification" (term spotted in Fashionista: How to perk up your eyebrows in one easy step).

Normcore

Normcore: blend of normal + hardcore, in other words, hardcore normal.

Defined as a bland anti-style, the notion of dressing in an utterly conventional, nondescript way. 

But what is normcore, and where did it come from? K-Hole, the New York trend forecasting agency that coined the term, tweeted a simplified explanation: “Normcore finds liberation in being nothing special, and realizes that adaptability leads to belonging.”

Beyond the jargon, this original notion of normcore is predicated on the desire to fit in rather than stand out. In fashion terms, normcore is all about anonymous, detail-free design.

Karl Lagerfeld transformed the Chanel catwalk into a super-lux supermarket where normcore models are wielding a trolley in distressed joggers and trainers

How to wear words

Almost every fashion designer has made clothes with words on. Apparently there are specific rules to wear words properly!



How to wear words on clothes – video | Fashion | theguardian.com:

The IWWIWWIWI generation

IWWIWWIWI – Acronym of “I Want What I Want When I Want It”. 

It could be considered the mantra of the millennials and refers to something that has to be available to everyone immediately.

Google search and immediate gratification capabilities are the characteristic of the: “I want what I want when I want it” generation.

In the fashion world there is an ongoing debate about the efficacy of the show system. What’s the reason of making clothes available to everyone to see via a live stream, when they cannot be able to buy them for another six months? At that point they will either have forgotten all about them and moved on to the next thing, or already bought the high street copy, and moved on to the next thing.

Sources:

• FT - How the IWWIWWIWI generation is changing fashion 
• ww.bulldogreporter.com

Shoe terminology

Recession-era brow

With the financial crisis looking more and more grim day by day, it’s understandable that all those extras we once spent on are no longer on our “to do list”. And, eyebrow grooming is one of them. It’s fuller, bushier, and, well, totally eighties. The thick “Brooke Shields-esque” brow is a lot easier to maintain than those thinner varieties, making trips to waxers or pluckers less frequent.

Only in 2010, the trend was about going completely brow-less. Models and stylists were bleaching or shaving eyebrows (see this cover).The idea was that having no eyebrows was a way to express oneself through edge looks without buying a product.

Source: Glamour

Not only thighgap: Is there such a thing as a side butt?

Sideboob

The origins of the sideboob – the area between armpit and ribcage – are not officially recorded, but it is thought to date back as far as 2005 to an episode of Family Guy, with Peter Griffin presenting his Sideboob Hour: "

Underboob

The bottom part of the breasts, exposed by an ill-fitting top – perhaps a jumper that looks like it has been unravelled from the bottom up. According to Urban Dictionary, there is even such a thing as an "underboob shirt". The underboob is not exactly new – think of those cliched 1980s shots of women in chilly crop tops – but it is enjoying a renaissance.

Back dimples

Also known as dimples of Venus, these are the little indentations some people have either side of their lower back (they're genetic).

Side butt

"Side butt is the new side boob," proclaimed New York magazine earlier this year, using an array of pictures of celebrities, including Kate Winslet and Jennifer Lopez, to prove it, all wearing dresses with transparent panels to display varying amounts of flesh between the top of the (side) thigh and hip, and around to the buttocks.

Thigh gap

The deranged idea that when you stand with your feet together, there should be a visible gap where your upper inner thighs do not meet, has apparently become the new obsession.

Bum slip

The bum slip is, apparently, the fleshy underside of the buttock cheeks, made visible when wearing very short shorts (Miley Cyrus), or a kind of leotard (Kate Moss). It is also known as "underbutt".

Butt cleavage

Already known as the "builder's bum", but now, thanks to Heidi Klum among others, the exposed arse crack has been legitimised as fashionable. At last, a body trend everybody – man and woman – can join in with.

Source:
From underboob to bum slip: the new female body parts

Fashion Lingo: terminologia per fashion blogger

Fashion Lingo.pdf

Arm party

Arm party: When somebody wears a bunch of different bracelets on the same arm, sometimes using many bright colors or different materials/metals is called an arm party. The more the merrier!

source:

Urban Dictionary

Grillz

Dental grills, usually made of gold and decorated with jewels.

Source: Could grills ruin your teeth?

Thigh gap

Thigh gap: to become so slender that the thighs don't touch even when the feet are together.