Fashion
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8correct to beat the crowd
This fashion and clothing trivia quiz runs 165 free questions with answers across the whole wardrobe: the couturiers who built Paris fashion (Worth, Poiret, Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent), the fabrics and construction terms (denim, linen, rayon, tulle, darts, plackets, raglan sleeves), the garments that changed how people dress (the miniskirt, the bikini, the wrap dress, riveted jeans, the little black dress) and the houses, magazines and awards that run the industry today. Easy questions ask which fabric comes from flax and which house makes No. 5; the hard ones want who shared Levi Strauss's 1873 rivet patent and which year the Chambre Syndicale was founded. It suits a fashion-student revision session, a pub quiz round or anyone who reads the credits at the end of a runway show. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the designer, house or garment, and each question shows its source once you answer.
30 of 165 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vogue's first overseas edition, launched in 1916, was published in which country?
Britain
Britain got its own Vogue in 1916 because wartime limits on shipping and a paper shortage in America made it hard to send copies across the Atlantic; a French edition followed in 1920.
Q 02What does the French term 'haute couture' literally translate to in English?
High Sewing
High sewing is the literal meaning, and in France the label is protected by law: only fashion houses on an official list drawn up each year may call their work haute couture.
Q 03Whose jersey wrap dress, launched in 1974, became a symbol of 1970s women's liberation?
Diane von Fürstenberg
Diane von Fürstenberg sold a million of her jersey wrap dresses within two years of the 1974 launch, and Newsweek put her on its cover in 1976.
Q 04Who was appointed the creative director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection in 2023?
Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams was named Louis Vuitton's men's creative director on 14 February 2023, filling the post left vacant by Virgil Abloh's death in 2021.
Q 05Which of these cities is NOT one of the 'Big Four' fashion capitals?
Tokyo
The 'Big Four' fashion capitals, renowned for hosting the most prominent fashion weeks, are New York, London, Milan, and Paris. While Tokyo hosts an important fashion week, it is not part of this specific group.
Q 06What was the theme for the 2024 Met Gala?
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion
'Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion' took its title from the garments themselves: the most fragile had to be shown lying flat in glass cases, like the fairy-tale princess.
Q 07Which British designer has refused to use leather or fur since launching her own label in 2001?
Stella McCartney
Stella McCartney, a lifelong vegetarian and vocal animal-rights campaigner, has kept leather and fur out of her designs since opening her own house in 2001.
Q 08Mary Quant said she named the miniskirt after what?
Her favourite make of car
Her favourite make of car, the Mini, gave Mary Quant the name; she said the car and the skirt went together, both 'optimistic, exuberant, young, flirty'.
Q 09Which actress married a prince in 1956 wearing a Helen Rose gown that her studio, MGM, gave as a wedding present?
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly retired from acting at 26 to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco; the lace-and-silk gown her studio gave her now belongs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Q 10How must a house make its garments to earn the legal label 'haute couture'?
Made-to-order for private clients
Made-to-order for private clients, with fittings, is the first rule; the rulebook grew out of a trade body founded in 1868 to protect Paris dressmakers from copyists.
Q 11Whose plunging green tropical-print dress at the 2000 Grammy Awards led Google to build its image search?
Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez in the dress became the most popular search Google had ever seen, but the site could return only text links, so its engineers built Google Images, launched in 2001.
Q 12Which iconic French designer is widely credited with popularizing the 'little black dress'?
Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel's short, plain black dress ran in American Vogue in 1926; the magazine likened it to a Ford car because, like the Model T, it was simple and within reach of women of every class.
Q 13What term describes a suit cut from a pattern drafted from scratch for a single client?
Bespoke
Q 21Which supermodel told Vogue in 1990, 'We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day'?
Linda Evangelista
Linda Evangelista was speaking for herself and Christy Turlington, at the moment a handful of models became as famous and as well paid as film stars; it is often called modelling's most famous quote.
Q 22What fine, net-like fabric is used in bridal wear and to add volume to garments?
Tulle
Tulle takes its name from the French town of Tulle, where the net is thought to have first been made; layers of it give ballet tutus and wedding gowns their volume.
Q 23Which British designer dragged punk fashion into the mainstream in the 1970s?
Vivienne Westwood
Bespoke is the old past participle of 'bespeak', to order something in advance; its pattern is drafted from scratch, where made-to-measure only adjusts a standard one.
Q 14What is the 1960s fashion movement of miniskirts, bold patterns and youthful style called?
Mod
Mod style began with London teenagers in sharp suits on Italian scooters; their seaside brawls with leather-clad rockers in 1964 set off a national panic about British youth.
Q 15Which British firm's founder invented gabardine in 1879 and later designed a weatherproof coat for army officers?
Burberry
Burberry's Thomas Burberry waterproofed the yarn before weaving, so gabardine breathed where rubberised raincoats did not; Amundsen and Shackleton wore it to the Antarctic.
Q 16What soft, breathable natural fiber is the world's most widely used for textiles?
Cotton
Cotton was slow and costly to clean by hand until the mechanical cotton gin of the 1790s stripped out its seeds, making the fibre cheap enough to become the world's everyday cloth.
Q 17Which designer is credited with introducing 'Le Smoking,' the iconic tuxedo suit for women, in 1966?
Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent launched it when smart restaurants still barred women in trousers; stopped at the door of Manhattan's La Côte Basque in a trouser suit, socialite Nan Kempner simply took the trousers off.
Q 18Which actress was the famous muse of designer Hubert de Givenchy, on and off screen?
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn first wore Givenchy in Sabrina (1954) and kept him for films including Breakfast at Tiffany's; his first perfume, L'Interdit, was created for her.
Q 19Which queen's white satin-and-lace wedding gown is widely credited with popularising white for brides?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 in white satin trimmed with Honiton lace, a boost for Devon's lace makers; royal brides before her had typically worn heavy brocade stitched with silver.
Q 20Which 1980s women's corporate fashion trend featured oversized silhouettes and broad shoulders?
Power Dressing
Power Dressing borrowed the tailored jacket and padded shoulders of men's suits, so that the growing number of women in management could project authority at work.
Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren ran the King's Road boutique SEX from 1974, selling rubber and fetish wear; its customers included the Sex Pistols, the band McLaren went on to manage.
Q 24Which Harper's Bazaar editor coined the phrase 'The New Look' for Dior's 1947 debut collection?
Carmel Snow
Carmel Snow told Dior after the February 1947 show that his dresses had 'such a new look'; his own name for the full-skirted line was Corolle, after a flower's ring of petals.
Q 25What term describes a small set of clothes chosen so that its few pieces combine into outfits for many occasions?
Capsule wardrobe
Capsule wardrobe was revived as a term in the 1970s by London boutique owner Susie Faux; Donna Karan popularised the idea in 1985 with seven easy pieces that all mixed and matched.
Q 26Which luxury brand, founded in 1837, began with equestrian accessories before leather goods and fashion?
Hermès
Hermès began in 1837 as Thierry Hermès's Paris harness workshop; when the motor car began to replace the carriage, his grandsons turned its saddle stitching to luggage and handbags.
Q 27Which garment did French engineer Louis Réard name in 1946 after the site of a nuclear test?
Bikini
Bikini Atoll, where the US had tested an atomic bomb days earlier, gave Réard the name; no fashion model would wear his tiny two-piece, so he hired a Casino de Paris dancer, Micheline Bernardini, to show it.
Q 28Which celebrity wore Marilyn Monroe's 1962 'Happy Birthday, Mr President' gown to the 2022 Met Gala?
Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian wore the original for only a few minutes on the red carpet, then changed into a replica to spare the 60-year-old gown.
Q 29Which sturdy twill fabric takes its name from the French city of Nîmes?
Denim
Denim is short for 'serge de Nîmes', the twill once made in that southern French city; 'jeans' has a similar origin, in the old French name for Genoa.
Q 30Which Italian designer dressed Richard Gere in American Gigolo (1980)?
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani dressed Gere's character in his soft, unstructured suits; he had quit medical school and started out dressing windows at Milan's La Rinascente department store.