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  • Keeping an eye on the time

    A watch is a small timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep working despite the motions caused by the person’s activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or other type of bracelet. A pocket watch is designed for a person to carry in a pocket.

    Watches evolved in the 17th century from spring-powered clocks, which appeared as early as the 14th century. During most of its history the watch was a mechanical device, driven by clockwork, powered by winding a mainspring, and keeping time with an oscillating balance wheel. In the 1960s the electronic quartz watch was invented, which was powered by a battery and kept time with a vibrating quartz crystal. By the 1980s the quartz watch had taken over most of the market from the mechanical watch.

    Today most inexpensive and medium-priced watches, used mainly for timekeeping, have quartz movements. Expensive collectible watches, valued more for their elaborate craftsmanship, aesthetic appeal and glamorous design than for simple timekeeping, often have traditional mechanical movements, even though they are less accurate and more expensive than electronic ones. Various extra features, called «complications», such as moon-phase displays and the different types of tourbillon, are sometimes included. Modern watches often display the day, date, month and year, and electronic watches may have many other functions. Time-related features such as timers, chronographs and alarm functions are common. Some modern designs incorporate calculators, GPS and Bluetooth technology or have heart-rate monitoring capabilities. Some watches use radio clock technology to regularly correct the time.

    Developments in the 2010s include smartwatches, which are elaborate computer-like electronic devices designed to be worn on a wrist. They generally incorporate timekeeping functions, but these are only small fractions of what the smartwatch can do.

    Watches evolved from portable spring-driven clocks, which first appeared in 15th century Europe. Watches weren’t widely worn in pockets until the 17th century. One account says that the word «watch» came from the Old English word woecce which meant «watchman», because it was used by town watchmen to keep track of their shifts at work.Another says that the term came from 17th century sailors, who used the new mechanisms to time the length of their shipboard watches (duty shifts).

    A great leap forward in accuracy occurred in 1657 with the addition of the balance spring to the balance wheel, an invention disputed both at the time and ever since between Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens. This innovation increased watches’ accuracy enormously, reducing error from perhaps several hours per day to perhaps 10 minutes per day, resulting in the addition of the minute hand to the face from around 1680 in Britain and 1700 in France.

    The increased accuracy of the balance wheel focused attention on errors caused by other parts of the movement, igniting a two-century wave of watchmaking innovation. The first thing to be improved was the escapement. The verge escapement was replaced in quality watches by the cylinder escapement, invented by Thomas Tompion in 1695 and further developed by George Graham in the 1720s. Improvements in manufacturing such as the tooth-cutting machine devised by Robert Hooke allowed some increase in the volume of watch production, although finishing and assembling was still done by hand until well into the 19th century.

    A major cause of error in balance wheel timepieces, caused by changes in elasticity of the balance spring from temperature changes, was solved by the bimetallic temperature compensated balance wheel invented in 1765 by Pierre Le Roy and improved by Thomas Earnshaw. The lever escapement was the single most important technological breakthrough, and was invented by Thomas Mudge in 1759 and improved by Josiah Emery in 1785, although it only gradually came into use from about 1800 onwards, chiefly in Britain.

    The British had predominated in watch manufacture for much of the 17th and 18th centuries, but maintained a system of production that was geared towards high quality products for the elite. Although there was an attempt to modernise clock manufacture with mass production techniques and the application of duplicating tools and machinery by the British Watch Company in 1843, it was in the United States that this system took off. Aaron Lufkin Dennison started a factory in 1851 in Massachusetts that used interchangeable parts, and by 1861 it was running a successful enterprise incorporated as the Waltham Watch Company.

  • Heart of the Ocean Diamond Necklace

    A necklace is an article of jewellery which is worn around the neck. Necklaces are frequently formed from a metal jewellery chain. Others are woven or manufactured from cloth using string or twine. Common features of necklaces include colorful stones (particularly gemstones or jewels), wood (usually carved or polished), art glass, feathers, shells, beads or corals – a hugely wide variety of other adornments have also been used. If a necklace includes a primary hanging feature, it is called a pendant; if the pendant is itself a small container, it is called a locket.

    Necklaces are worn by both men and women in cultures around the world for purposes of adornment and social status. However, in Western society, the word necklace in English often carries a female connotation. Men in Western countries often call their neck jewelry chains instead.

    Necklaces have been an integral part of jewelry since the time of ancient civilizations and pre-date the invention of writing.

    Necklaces are believed to be as old as 40,000 years, during the Stone Age. The oldest necklaces were made of purely natural materials – before weaving and the invention of string, durable vines or pieces of animal sinew left over from hunts were tied together and adorned with shells, bones or teeth or colourful skins of human prey animals, bird feathers, corals, carved pieces of wood, colorful seeds or stones or naturally occurring gems, or other beautiful or artful natural elements found nearby.

    During the neolithic period shell necklaces were made with the shells of 3 genera Spondylus, Glycymeris and Charonia.[1]
    Cloth working and metalworking greatly expanded the range of jewelry available to humans. Twine and string enabled the development of smaller, more durable, more intricate necklaces. After the Bronze Age began and humans discovered how to melt metal and cast it into shapes, bronze, copper, silver, gold, electrum, platinum and a variety of other metals were used to make eye-catching necklaces for both men and women, and metal chains became possible. Gemcutting and glassblowing allowed faceted and highly polished gemstones and/or beautiful art glass to be added to pieces.

    In the modern era, a variety of new metals are available for necklaces that earlier generations could not properly melt until high-temperature crucibles and blowtorches were developed, such as stainless steel and titanium; electroplating has enabled mass ownership of gold (or at least gold-veneer) jewelry. Miniaturisation and laser etching enable the crafting of finely detailed artwork, or insignias or other calligraphy, within individual necklace elements.

  • Shop this season’s designer gowns

    A gown, from medieval Latin gunna, is a usually loose outer garment from knee- to full-length worn by men and women in Europe from the early Middle Ages to the 17th century, and continuing today in certain professions; later, gown was applied to any full-length woman’s garment consisting of a bodice and attached skirt. A long, loosely fitted gown called a Banyan was worn by men in the 18th century as an informal coat.

    The gowns worn today by academics, judges, and some clergy derive directly from the everyday garments worn by their medieval predecessors, formalized into a uniform in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries.

    In women’s fashion, gown was used in English for any one-piece garment, but more often through the 18th century for an overgarment worn with a petticoat – called in French a robe. Compare this to the short gowns or bedgowns of the later 18th century.

    Before the Victorian period, the word «dress» usually referred to a general overall mode of attire for either men or women, such as in the phrases «evening dress», «morning dress», «travelling dress», «full dress», «priest’s gown» which are white, and so on, rather than to any specific garment, and the most often used English word for a woman’s skirted garment was gown. By the early 20th century, both «gown» and «frock» were essentially synonymous with «dress», although gown was more often used for a formal, heavy or full-length garment and frock or dress for a lightweight, shorter, or informal one. Only in the last few decades has «gown» lost its general meaning of a woman’s garment in the United States in favor of «dress». Today, the usage is chiefly British, except in historical senses or in formal cases, such as evening gown and wedding gown. Formal gowns generally have a fitted bodice and a full-length full skirt.

  • Unique and Complex watch design

    Footwear refers to garments worn on the feet, which originally serves to purpose of protection against adversities of the environment, usually regarding ground textures and temperature. Footwear in the manner of shoes therefore primarily serves the purpose to ease the locomotion and prevent injuries. Secondly footwear can also be used for fashion and adornment as well as to indicate the status or rank of the person within a social structure. Socks and other hosiery are typically worn additionally between the feet and other footwear for further comfort and relief.

    Cultures have different customs regarding footwear. These include not using any in some situations, usually bearing a symbolic meaning. This can however also be imposed on specific individuals to place them at a practical disadvantage against shod people, if they are excluded from having footwear available or are prohibited from using any. This usually takes place in situations of captivity, such as imprisonment or slavery, where the groups are among other things distinctly divided by whether or whether not footwear is being worn. In these cases the use of footwear categorically indicates the exercise of power as against being devoid of footwear, evidently indicating inferiority.

    Footwear is in use since earliest human history, archeological finds of complete shoes date back to the copper age (ca. 5.000 BCE). Some ancient civilizations, such as Egypt however saw no practical need for footwear due to convenient climatic and landscape situations and used shoes primarily as ornaments and insignia of power.

    The Romans saw clothing and footwear as unmistakable signs of power and status in society, and most Romans wore footwear, while slaves and peasants remained barefoot. The Middle Ages saw the rise of high-heeled shoes, also associated with power, and the desire to look larger than life, and artwork from that period often depicts bare feet as a symbol of poverty. Depictions of captives such as prisoners or slaves from the same period well into the 18th century show the individuals barefooted almost exclusively, at this contrasting the prevailing partakers of the scene. Officials like prosecutors, judges but also slave owners or passive bystanders were usually portrayed wearing shoes.

    In some cultures, people remove their shoes before entering a home. Bare feet are also seen as a sign of humility and respect, and adherents of many religions worship or mourn while barefoot. Some religious communities explicitly require people to remove shoes before they enter holy buildings, such as temples.

    In several cultures people remove their shoes as a sign of respect towards someone of higher standing. In a similar context deliberately forcing other people to go barefoot while being shod oneself has been used to clearly showcase and convey one’s superiority within a setting of power disparity.

  • Latest Trendy Outfit Ideas

    By the early years of the 21st century, western clothing styles had, to some extent, become international styles. This process began hundreds of years earlier, during the periods of European colonialism. The process of cultural dissemination has perpetuated over the centuries as Western media corporations have penetrated markets throughout the world, spreading Western culture and styles. Fast fashion clothing has also become a global phenomenon. These garments are less expensive, mass-produced Western clothing. Donated used clothing from Western countries are also delivered to people in poor countries by charity organizations.

    The world of clothing is always changing, as new cultural influences meet technological innovations. Researchers in scientific labs have been developing prototypes for fabrics that can serve functional purposes well beyond their traditional roles, for example, clothes that can automatically adjust their temperature, repel bullets, project images, and generate electricity. Some practical advances already available to consumers are bullet-resistant garments made with kevlar and stain-resistant fabrics that are coated with chemical mixtures that reduce the absorption of liquids.

    Though mechanization transformed most aspects of human industry by the mid-20th century, garment workers have continued to labor under challenging conditions that demand repetitive manual labor. Mass-produced clothing is often made in what are considered by some to be sweatshops, typified by long work hours, lack of benefits, and lack of worker representation. While most examples of such conditions are found in developing countries, clothes made in industrialized nations may also be manufactured similarly.[citation needed]

    Coalitions of NGOs, designers (including Katharine Hamnett, American Apparel, Veja, Quiksilver, eVocal, and Edun) and campaign groups like the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights as well as textile and clothing trade unions have sought to improve these conditions as much as possible by sponsoring awareness-raising events, which draw the attention of both the media and the general public to the workers.

    The use of animal fur in clothing dates to prehistoric times. It is currently associated in developed countries with expensive, designer clothing, although fur is still used by indigenous people in arctic zones and higher elevations for its warmth and protection. Once uncontroversial, it has recently been the focus of campaigns on the grounds that campaigners consider it cruel and unnecessary. PETA, along with other animal rights and animal liberation groups have called attention to fur farming and other practices they consider cruel.

    Clothing suffers assault both from within and without. The human body sheds skin cells and body oils, and exudes sweat, urine, and feces. From the outside, sun damage, moisture, abrasion and dirt assault garments. Fleas and lice can hide in seams. Worn clothing, if not cleaned and refurbished, itches, looks scruffy, and loses functionality (as when buttons fall off, seams come undone, fabrics thin or tear, and zippers fail).

    In some cases, people wear an item of clothing until it falls apart. Cleaning leather presents difficulties, and bark cloth (tapa) cannot be washed without dissolving it. Owners may patch tears and rips, and brush off surface dirt, but old leather and bark clothing always look old.

  • Best Designer Wear

    Clothes……ever since we began wrapping ourselves in leaves and animal skins, clothing has represented a very important part of our needs. So important it is, studies show that clothing ranks with food and shelter in a hierarchy of needs1.

    In different ages, people have valued particular clothing for different reasons; to cover their nakedness, for protection from bad weather, for protection in war or for the status or symbol associated with particular clothing and more.

    Perhaps, it is not fair to say that through all these ages no people ever had a fascination of clothes as in our time… But we must agree that we have set giant strides in the business of clothing; from the head-aching prices of some clothes to the worldwide appeals of some brands and the vivacity with which these brands are patronized. Welcome to the world of Designer Clothing.

    Designer clothing is distinguished from other brands by the name it bears (and there is quite a long list of names): the rule is, the ´bigger` the name, the more excited the customer, the more expensive the cloth.

    It is agreed that the history of designer clothes began in the 19th century, “Charles Frederick Worth… was the first designer to have his label sewn into the garments that he created”2.

    The Designer Clothing industry has grown so much since then…it has spread from Europe to the other continents of the world with notable designers from The Americas, Asia, and The Middle East getting international recognition and patronage.

    The clothes made by these designers has also changed over the years with inputs by different peoples from different cultures with different experiences the designer clothing industry today is a reflection of the creativity of the designers, the groundbreaking job of their marketers and the gullibility(or otherwise) of the people.

    Depending on the particular clothing being talked about the answer to both questions may be yes or no.

    What people go to buy when they visit an outlet that deals in designer clothes is the image that being seen with that brand bestows on them (this may be due to a particular celebrity using that brand or due to the marketing theme of the company), people buy designer clothes to get the exclusivity that having the particular brand confers on them……they are buying the status and symbol not the clothing.

  • Love the fusion

    In crude terms fashion is a style of living. There are aristocratic fashions, film-style fashions, peasant class fashions and a kind of fashion known as maverick fashion. Naturally it is related to dress and manners. But manners imply something deeper than fashions. Because fashion is comparatively superficial, and changes with the winds of change in certain races and people.

    At one time Paris dictated fashions in dress. Today, however, the climate has changed. In India the film world dominates and craze for the queer and the unconventional is gaining ground. The styles of dressing are always in a fluid state, and before one fashion sets a foothold another pushes it out. New films pop up every year with queer innovations in dress, the young ladies promptly copy them, and the tailor masters make new bucks fast, and thereby hang a tale. Let alone young maidens, even elderly ladies are lured by the new fashion.

    Today the modern improvement in cosmetics claim to make the old hags and frumps look tolerably young and smart. Why then should one lag behind and submit to the ravages of time and age? Thus fashion craze has banished sobriety.

    Among men the fashion trend does not remain confined to smartness only. The maverick style infects a class. They wear steel bangles, put on crystal necklaces and even wear earring in one ear.

    Life has become fast and distrust for tradition is becoming a cult today. But today smoking and even drinking is no taboo in some societies. The joint families today are in ruins, and even the family units are slack and sloppy. Naturally parental care, affection and family discipline become the severest victims of changing fashion.

  • Create your own beautiful designs

    Glamour originally was a term applied to a magical-occult spell that was cast on somebody to make them see something the spell-caster wished them to see, when in fact it was not what it seemed to be. In the late 19th century terminology, a non-magical item used to help create a more attractive appearance gradually became known as ‘a glamour’. Today, glamour is the impression of attraction or fascination that a particularly luxurious or elegant appearance creates, an impression which is better than the reality. Typically, a person, event, location, technology, or product such as a piece of clothing can be glamorous or add glamour.

    Virginia Postrel says that for glamour to be successful nearly always requires sprezzatura – an appearance of effortlessness, and to appear distant – transcending the everyday, to be slightly mysterious and somewhat idealised, but not to the extent it is no longer possible to identify with the person.Glamorous things are neither opaque, hiding all, nor transparent showing everything, but translucent, favourably showing things.

    The early Hollywood star system in particular specialised in Hollywood glamour where they systematically glamorised their actors and actresses.

    Glamour can be confused with a style, which is adherence to a particular school of fashion, or intrinsic beauty; whereas glamour can be external and deliberate

    Late in the 19th century the common meaning shifted to being applied to ordinary objects and jewellery without connotations of supernatural, merely upon the effect that it has on appearance. This is a sense used in this article and to some extent is the way that it was used by the early Hollywood system.

    In modern usage glamour is often confused with style or beauty; but they may be considered to be distinct, although glamour may give the appearance of beauty or present as a personal style.

  • Latest and Greatest celebrity style

    Design became the medium and subject of reflection, protest, and criticism. As a result, sociopolitical issues increasingly moved into the designer’s focus. The dark side of capitalist production modes—global social dislocations and environmental consequences, for example—became increasingly visible.

    In 1971, Austrian-American designer Victor Papanek published the book Design for the Real World, in which he pleads for a design that feels beholden not only to economic interests and strategic market considerations, but is also conscious of its role as global actor. In Papanek’s view, consumer society led to a neglect of design’s ethical aspects. His provocative assertion was that only few “professions are more harmful than industrial design,” which is why design must “become an innovative, creative, and interdisciplinary instrument true to the needs of the people.”3

    In the 1970s, designers again became aware of their social and environmental responsibility. Today’s eco-design, debates about sustainability, and attempts to recycle existing materials in the development of new products trace their origins to the protests of the 1960s.

    A new self-conception and self-awareness also emerged at this time for designers. They no longer wanted to be agents or optimizers, but to become reflexive, critical entities reflecting on the conditions of design’s creation, questioning the economic and cultural framework in which they operated, and proposing alternatives. The tentative high point of this new self-conception is Critical Design, founded around 2000 by English designers Anthony Dunne (born in 1964) and Fiona Raby (born in 1963). It doesn’t manufacture any practically useful objects, but rather seeks to show “that the everyday could also be different—that things can change.”

    In Italy, Radical Design offered another answer to the crisis of classical, industry-related product design. Starting in the late 1960s, it questioned modernism’s strict prevailing functionalism. In the 1980s, this rejection culminated in the programmatic “anything goes” approach of Italy’s Memphis Group and the market noncompliance of “Neues Deutsches Design,” which was oriented to the artistic process. Indeed, much of the design of the 1980s that took a critical stance toward industry sought a proximity to art; it wanted to elevate the designer from industrial production’s anonymity. So emerged the artist-like “auteur designer” who, similar to the designers of the early 20th-century reform movements, developed high-quality and usually expensive products.

  • Beauty from high-fashion looks

    The characterization of a person as “beautiful”, whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as personality, intelligence, grace, politeness, charisma, integrity, congruence and elegance, and outer beauty which includes physical attributes which are valued on an aesthetic basis.

    Standards of beauty have changed over time, based on changing cultural values. Historically, paintings show a wide range of different standards for beauty. However, humans who are relatively young, with smooth skin, well-proportioned bodies, and regular features, have traditionally been considered the most beautiful throughout history.

    A strong indicator of physical beauty is «averageness».When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the «ideal» image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, overlaid photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive compared to any of the individual images.Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces.]It is argued that it is evolutionarily advantageous that creatures are attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features, because it suggests the absence of genetic or acquired defects. There is also evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in infancy, and is probably innate, and that the rules by which attractiveness is established are similar across different genders and cultures.

    A feature of beautiful women that has been explored by researchers is a waist–hip ratio of approximately 0.70. Physiologists have shown that women with hourglass figures are more fertile than other women due to higher levels of certain female hormones, a fact that may subconsciously condition males choosing mates.

    People are influenced by the images they see in the media to determine what is or is not beautiful. Some feminists and doctors[vague] have suggested that the very thin models featured in magazines promote eating disorders,and others have argued that the predominance of white women featured in movies and advertising leads to a Eurocentric concept of beauty, feelings of inferiority in women of color,and internalized racism.

    The black is beautiful cultural movement sought to dispel this notion.

    Fatima Lodhi, a young diversity and anti-colorism advocate from Pakistan, claims that

    «Beauty comes in all shapes, shades and sizes».

    The concept of beauty in men is known as ‘bishōnen’ in Japan. Bishōnen refers to males with distinctly feminine features, physical characteristics establishing the standard of beauty in Japan and typically exhibited in their pop culture idols. A multibillion-dollar industry of Japanese Aesthetic Salons exists for this reason.