Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.—Coco Chanel

I oh-so-briefly considered doing a summary of last year’s fashion news and quickly dropped the idea when, after about three minutes of research, I realized there was just too much that happened across too wide a range of fashion-related topics to ever do the subject any justice on my own. Fortunately, the good folks over at Business of Fashion have already done a more-than-adequate job of concatenating stories that were either important or, at the very least, received a lot of response, and then divided them into nice, readable chunks so that we don’t feel completely inundated by the volume. This makes my job very easy: Link you to their lists, which is what I’m about to do.

 Fashion 2.0

Fashion 2.0 is BoF’s fashion tech section and covers everything from mobile apps to wearable tech. Be sure to check out the article on Instagram wars.

Intelligence

What would fashion be if we couldn’t speculate about what may or may not be happening behind the scenes? From this list, be sure to read Do Fashion Trends Still Exist? and Between the Catwalk and the Consumer: Fashion’s Growing Diversity Gap.

Brands

For a fashion label to truly succeed, attention has to be given to building the brand. There’s  more than one way to the top, as this set of articles shows. The article on Uniqlo may be the best read for later conversation; the company is determined to take over fashion retail.

People

Oh my goodness, but this is one topic that is never short of drama and intrigue. By-passing all the who’s-going-where intrigue, though, this list focuses on more positive-toned articles. Check out the piece on Diane von Furstenberg as well as Lisa Eldridge.

Global Currents

Fashion is not isolated for its four major cities; what happens around the world impacts the entire market. Unfortunately, the news here isn’t all that good as markets in Russia and Brazil may signal the beginning of a global downturn. Each of these articles hold some serious thoughts.

Opinion

Everyone has an opinion and we all know those are not exactly high on value. Some of these are worth considering, though, and definitely worth the time to read.

There’s plenty of other year-end news as well, but this at least should help everyone get caught up before we become inundated with the new stuff this year.