Tatiana Pogrebnyak: "The greatest difference between nowadays fashion and Mozart’s time fashion refers to its extension, purpose, volumes and its interchangeability. In the 18th century fashion was available to a very limited social class, mostly, to aristocratic society and rich merchants. The masses were wearing “previous fashion” or some basic clothes, suitable for hard and dirty work. So called “latest fashion” was spread at the court and hardly reached distant areas. Even province aristocracy was wearing old fashioned toilets. The purpose of Rococo fashion might be understood through wasteful lifestyle of the time, devoted to pleasures and amusements, flirt and love affairs. May be “Les Liaisons dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos reveal best the court atmosphere.

Tatiana Pogrebnyak/Triumph International Fashion Award 2006

Women, dressed to kill, seductive and provocative, wearing deep décolleté dresses with satin bows and ribbons, decorating their toilets with lace and flowers, doing everything to attract male attention. Therefore through the race of embellishment, garments and hairstyle reached enormous dimensions, which limited any kind of activity. In comparison to Rococo, modern fashion is widely spread almost among all social classes. It differs from one society group to another, from region to region, but still it might be called fashion, represented by specific silhouette, shape, fabric, details, colour palette, etc. Modern fashion purpose goes into different directions: daywear, eveningwear, active wear, leisure wear and many others. Looking seductive or not depends on the wearer. Fashion volumes in comparison with Rococo are brought to minimum, except for haute couture fashion. An interesting point to mention is super fast fashion interchangeability in our days, changing every season, and providing the potential client with numerous different fashion pieces, while the Rococo fashion period lasted for several decades and “new fashions” brought only slight changes to the silhouette, being different in the amount of decorations.”

What will be the function of fashion in the future?

Paz Soto Salinas: "Fashion already is more important as ever and it will have even more influence in the future. It’s already impossible to sell a product without the right design and marketing strategy, no matter how good it is. Lifestyle or fashion magazines and TV programs will pop up from everywhere. They already are floating the market. Men, as consumers, will gain more and more importance. Trend, style, design, fashion - however you call it, it all points in the same direction. They will overlap stronger in the future.”

Kirsten Hiller: "In comparison to the nineties, where fashion seemed quite stale, you can sense a trend towards self composition and a love for more individual details nowadays. Each and everyone turn into his own hero, or already have. This is a trend which will surely last into the near future and beyond.”

Kirsten Hiller/Triumph International Fashion Award 2006

1. Mozart  2. Design