Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. The term "minimalist" is often applied colloquially to designate anything which is spare or stripped to its essentials .The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music which features repetition and iteration.
As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, John McLaughlin, Robert Morris .
Effortless, unfussy, unadorned, and powerfully understated, stark minimalist style is one of few fashion trends that works for virtually all women of any age, shape, or social occupation. There's something extremely confident and uncomplicated about this unpretentious look, which showcases a woman's shape, face, and personality, without any need to distract the eye with ornamental embellishments or patterns.

Minimalism is a way of life that means simplicity. It is not so aggressive in comparison with ego centric life and believes in simple procedure for life. In minimalism the leading force is delicacy of feelings. It proffers easy structures, simplicity, self-assurance, and a straightforward philosophy, which leads to satisfaction.
Minimalism living style has been around for thousands of years but its popularity increased lately. Possibly it happened because many people, used to living a material life, are not satisfied with their life and started to question that why they are not satisfied, why the things don’t make them happy. Some people are realizing the fact that by living with less they can get more.
The Minimalism is a lifestyle that involves living with only those things required for happiness, health and comfort.

THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF MINIMALISM TO BE AS FOLLOWS:
1. Impersonal Austerity
2. Anti-figurative forms
3. Democratic/Accessible
IMPERSONAL AUSTERITY
Impersonal: featureless, anonymous
Austerity: extreme plainness and simplicity
In combining the two words together, what art scholars are trying to say is that Minimalism is the opposite of expressivism, hence the typical works are cold, and exudes little emotion. Older, expressive works tend to be crammed with metaphors, which early minimalist artists wanted to depart from. To them, their deal was that, ‘here is a cube.’ And that’s that. What they were more interested in was the shape and form and surface of the cube. The same thing can be applied to fashion. Minimalist designers concentrate on the specifics of form and fabric rather than the function of the garment as a body covering. They do this through processes such as rigorous reductivism and the utilsation of non-emotive design.

RIGOROUS REDUCTIVISM
I think most of us are familiar, or can at least deduce what the term means. Stripping the design object to its core would be the basic understanding of its meaning. However, it also refers to removing the appearance of composition, so even if the construction is incredibly complex, the final works look deceivingly simple, often utilising invisible closures. Take for example, the famous Balenciaga wedding dress. It can almost be considered a sculpture on its own, but it’s not held up by any corsetry nor does it follows the shape of the human body (a common theme in Minimalist works), The entire dress was moulded from the three seams connecting incredible lengths of silk gazar.

NON-EMOTIVE DESIGN
Non-emotive design elements are usually typified by geometric composition and/or the use of non-conventional materials.
Extreme simplicity often begins from simple lines and geometric shapes, and many early Minimalist works were plainly repetitions of shapes and the utilisation of lines and planes. Gareth Pugh pushed this idea further with his seminal works back in 2007, where the use of geometric repetition and linear shapes were prominent, and continued to be until very recently.
Early Minimalism rejects traditional craftsmanship in art objects, opting for sleek, industrial materials. Fashion’s equivalent would be the Japanese who often opt for unconventional fabrics not often found in ‘expensive’ clothing. There is Comme des Garçons whose boiled wool and polyester are some of the most common fabrics found in her collections, and I do believe that PVC has been sent down the runway more often than genuine leathers. But when it comes to textile technology, Issey Miyake led the way with his polyester Pleats Please and A-POC, both inventions he spearheaded to revolutionise how we view clothes, in that high-quality garments need not be made of expensive materials sewn by a hundred old ladies in an atelier. On the Parisian front, there were of course, the famous Paco Rabanne’s metal dress, Courreges‘s preference for vinyl, and Hussein Chalayan’s transformational table dress.

ANTI-FIGURATIVE FORMS
Figurative: derived from real object sources; representational of the human body or real-life objects
Related to the idea of form over function which was previously mentioned, the anti-figurative component of Minimalism also removes the idea of a ‘figure’ in terms of gender and human form from clothing. The book names the kimono as the perfect example of clothing that ‘eliminates gender distinction, and negate the sexuality frequently imbued in Western clothing’. Its emphasis on proportions and volume paints a picture of a genderless, ageless and weightless body. Issey Miyake once said, “I learned about space between the body and the fabric from the traditional kimono… not the style, but the space.”

Issey Miyake ‘Colombe’ Dress, 1991 – The same dress, unsnapped, hangs in the background.

It was probably no coincidence that Japanese fashion pioneers were heavily reliant on the abstraction and rejection of the traditional female body so often glorified in mainstream Western, and some Oriental cultures. One of the most-lauded runway shows the fashion industry never ceases to refer back to is Comme des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 1997 show – ‘Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body.’ The initial reactions were unsurprisingly unpleasant and plenty of editors were getting all weirded out. To be fair it did look like Ms. Kawakubo had sent down Quasimodo lookalikes down the runway. As usual she was trying to challenge the traditional perceptions of beauty, but what was more important was that she re-adapted the female body as a gender-neutral costume. The lumps and bumps were not meant to constrict nor complement the female body, but instead created entirely new structures altogether.

DEMOCRATIC/ACCESSIBLE
As I have mentioned earlier, Minimalist artists shun metaphors and traditional craftsmanship, which are often found in high brow art. The underlying key is that Minimalism is not about achieving flawlessness, but cultivating the relationship between the viewer and the object, like that approachable kid next door with a gap in his teeth and chicken pox scars as opposed to the beautiful work of art that is Benedict Cumberbatch who is forever unattainable.
The idea of of accessibility, or accessible clothing, has briefly surfaced in the previous points, such as using cheap materials to make creative, high-quality garments, and not having to conform to the idealised beauty standards to don genderless, weightless and ageless clothing.
However I believe that Deconstructionism brings the idea of democratic clothing even further, in that what you see, is what you truly see. It takes a complete garment and reduce it even further to its barest state; a snapshot in time portraying the process of its construction, stripping it down to its fundamental parts. Take it as an extreme form of reductivism, if you’d like. Margiela is often quoted as the pioneer of Deconstructionism, if not a Deconstruction specialist. His interest in the fundamentals of materials and processes of dress drove him to create garments that are diagrams of the construction stages. As someone who has a very shallow idea of a garment’s technical construction, being given a glimpse of its complexity allows me to have a greater appreciation of the process, sort of like how the audience always enjoy behind-the-scenes outtakes. One can only imagine the depth of the creativity and skills needed to create a particular process made tangible and frozen in time, in a way that looks like a proper, finished work.

15 WAYS YOU KNOW YOU ARE A MINIMALIST
1. The other brands you'll wear include Zara, Mango, Calvin Klein, Alexander Mcqueen,etc.

2. Your idea of evening wear is a silk spaghetti strap slip dress—please keep the accoutrement away from your body.
3. The Golden Age of Fashion for you will always be the1990s.
4. The LBD isn't a staple, it's a way of life.

5. Purity in style is akin to purity of mind and body to you—too much clutter overwhelms your psyche.
6. Your color palette consists of mainly black and white but you'll wear navy if you're feeling bold.
7. Prints? Why would anyone wear prints? They're for walls and young children only.
8. Tailoring is a way of life. All of your clothing fits like it was made for you and only you.
9. You've never met a statement shoe that you've liked.

10. You are partial to slides, mules and pumps that are well designed and simple.
11. Your style icons include Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Vanessa Traina, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Olsen—most of the time.
12. Boho is a bad word.
13. Jewelry, if ever worn, should be delicate, personal and, yes, simple.
14. Your beauty look is unfussy as well—you're all about no makeup makeup, possibly a red lip, wash and dry hair or a loose, low bun.
15.. Your motto is less is more and more is so gauche.