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April 2013 Teacher’s name Shopping Assignment Young Misses Imagine the bustling of girls within a clothing store as they grab as many pieces as they can hold, to run into the fitting room, and return with the best choices, only to start the cycle over again. Yet, they don’t tire of it because the many different possibilities of seeing different combinations of shapes and colors on one’s body are intriguing. Even the different types of fabrics give different feels to one’s skin, changing the whole appearance and desire of the garment.
I have done a omparison of dresses between the stores of H&M, Forever21, and Topshop, with a focus on the different fabric, the silhouette, and the colors of the store’s collection. In lower end stores like Forever21 , synthetic fabrics are use commonly to lessen the cost and make easier to care for. Topshop and H is a step higher from being on the lower end spectrum and can afford the use more of natural fibers. In comparison, all stores have a high amount of polyester products and mixture of different fibers. All stores also use some percentages of nature fibers like wool, cotton, and silk.
H is making a more conscious decision to use more organic fibers. Topshop and H shares a fair amount of both knits and weaves, while Forever21 holds more weaved pieces. The silhouette of this season’s trend is a closely fitted top sewn with either a closely fitted skirt piece, or a gathered/flare a-line skirt piece. [Pictures are attached. ] All the stores are geared toward the same demographic and therefore share the same silhouette. Forever21 does more uses of the gathered/flare skirt while Topshop and H&M uses similar amounts of either two skirt shapes, which is logical if we look t the material used, knits verses weaves.
All the collections use a mixture of neutral colors, mainly white. The main color theme is pastel colors with a few bright colored pieces. It seems that the big trend of wearing bright colors have come down a few levels since the last few season. Topshop is geared more toward the cool side of the pastel palette. Meanwhile, Forever21 favors more of the warm colors of the palette. H&M seems to hold no side and has a good mixture of cool and warm colors. The majority of garments are solid colors with the few usual floral and animal prints.
Overall, I feel that most of the dresses in all the three stores can be interchangeable to be sold in any of the studied stores. This is beneficial to the customer because she can shop in different stores for her one style. Her closet will look cohesive and add to her character as one person. On the other hand, the prices and value of the dresses do differ with Topshop on the higher end, around $60-200 average, H&M in the center, $20-100 average, and Forever21 last, $20-50 average. So depending on your budget, you can browse around all three shops, or limit yourself down to the bottom two. By pakou4