Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fashion describes the creation, mixing, and wearing of clothing, footwear, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery as signifiers of social status, self-expression, and group belonging. The term originates from the Latin word facere, meaning "to make." It can refer at once to an industry, designs, aesthetics, and trends.
The world's three top fashion capitals are New York City's Manhattan, Paris, and Milan, which are headquarters to the most significant fashion companies. Tokyo, London, and Los Angeles are considered second-tier fashion centers. Fashion weeks in these cities let designers exhibit new collections.
Haute couture is aspirational fashion inspired by art and culture and in most cases reserved for the economic elite. In France the term is legally limited to members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris. The history of fashion design dates to 1858, when Charles Frederick Worth opened the first authentic haute couture house in Paris.
Historians including James Laver and Fernand Braudel date the start of Western fashion to the middle of the 14th century. The most dramatic early change was the sudden shortening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks. By 1800 all Western Europeans believed they dressed alike.
Early Western travelers to India, Persia, Turkey, and China claimed fashion there did not change, a myth tied to Orientalism and 19th-century European imperialism. The claim is generally held to be untrue, with considerable evidence of rapidly changing styles in Ming China. In 1609 the secretary of the Japanese shogun even bragged inaccurately that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years.
The explicit use of fashion as activism is referred to as fashion activism, and many designers took political stances during 2017 fashion weeks. Prabal Gurung sent out T-shirts reading "The Future is Female" with proceeds to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. At the 76th Cannes Film Festival, model Mahlagha Jaberi wore a noose-shaped gown reading "Stop Executions" as a statement against executions in Iran.