Made in France: Identities, Cultures, and Globalization in French Fashion Business

France entered the twentieth century as a powerful European and colonial nation. In the course of the century, her role changed dramatically: in the first fifty years two World Wars and economic decline removed its status as a world power, whilst the immediate post-war era was marked by wars of independence in its colonies. Yet at the same time, in the second half of the century, France entered a period of unprecedented growth and social transformation. Throughout the century and into the new millennium France retained its former international reputation as a centre for cultural excellence and innovation and its culture, together with that of the Francophone world, reflected the increased richness and diversity of the period. This 2003 Companion explores this vibrant culture, and includes chapters on history, language, literature, thought, theatre, architecture, visual culture, film and music, and discuss the contributions of popular culture, Francophone culture, minorities and women.

Fashion is both public and private, material and symbolic, always caught within the lived experience and providing an incredible tool to study culture and history. The Fabric of Cultures examines the impact of fashion as a manufacturing industry and as a culture industry that shapes the identities of nations and cities in a cross-cultural perspective, within a global framework.nbsp; The collected essays investigate local and global economies, cultures and identities and the book offers for the first time, a wide spectrum of case studies which focus on a diversity of geographical spaces and places, from global capitals of fashion such as New York, to countries less known or identifiable for fashion such as contemporary Greece and soviet Russia. Highly illustrated and including essays from all over the world, The Fabric of Cultures provides a comprehensive survey of the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on fashion, identity and globalisation.

Fashion History: A Global View proposes a new perspective on fashion history. Arguing that fashion has occurred in cultures beyond the West throughout history, this groundbreaking book explores the geographic places and historical spaces that have been largely neglected by contemporary fashion studies, bringing them together for the first time.

Why is fashion "in fashion" in museums today? This timely volume brings together expert scholars and curators to examine the reasons behind fashion's popularity in the twenty-first century museum and the impact this has had on wider museum practice.Chapters explore the role of fashion in the museum across a range of international case studies including the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Fashion Museum at Bath, ModeMuseum in Antwerp and many more. Contributions look at topics such as how fashion has made museums accessible to diverse audiences and how curators present broader themes and issues such as gender, class and technology innovatively through exhibiting fashion. Drawing on approaches from dress history, fashion studies, museum studies and curatorship, this engaging book will be key reading for students and scholars across a range of disciplines.

Some key data about the future of the fashion industry highlight the need for immediate action. The increase of clothing consumption will generate an increase in the use of resources and generation of waste. On the other hand, the demand of consumers interested in sustainability is increasing, also in luxury. The book will be investigating the key drivers that are reshaping the fashion industry towards the 4th Industrial Revolution, including traceability and transparency, circularity, collaborative consumption, new technologies, B-corporations. The Author supports the thesis that the most innovative business models in the fashion sector will be based on a value proposition that integrates ethics, aesthetics and innovation, offering product customization, planning the activities for consumer's participation in the company's operations, digitalization, and use of technology in order to optimize the processes along the value chain.

Fashion is everywhere! Fashion transcends domains and applies to almost any kind of product (e.g., apparel, cars, digital devices, food, literature, trips, music, house decoration, personal wellness). Fashion greatly influences public interest, media coverage, and product success. The global fashion apparel industry, for example, is one of the most important in terms of investments, trade, and employment while depending upon unpredictable demand. In the world of fashion, companies face a dilemma: On one hand, they create products with shorter life cycles; on the other hand they expect such products to repeatedly reap large profits. One of the main challenges fashion product managers face is to create and launch fashion products that will continuously meet the same success with customers. For example, will the long skirt have the same success than the skinny jean, or will the high heel prevail over the flats? Moreover, the fashion industry deals with products that greatly impact personal appearance, seduction, thus, relationships with others. Indeed, a fashion dress is more than just a dress, as it can change one's appearance and reveal the consumer's identity. Consequently, fashion managers not only are responsible for their product lines, but also for the symbolic image they help customers convey. This book focuses on the fashion apparel and accessories industry. It introduces the concept of fashion equity--the value fashion adds to products--a key concept to explain fashion products attractiveness and success, despite their constant renewal. Based on deep analyses of manufacturers and retailers' best practices, customers' and companies' interviews, and the latest academic research on fashion marketing, this book will assist companies to manage the value fashion adds to products, extract larger profits despite their shorter life cycles, and help them create long-term loyal customers.

The ways in which we design, make, transport and then discard clothes has a huge social and environmental impact. This book covers responsible business practices and sustainability in the fashion industry from the raw fibre stage, through production, to the point of customer consumption. The concepts of responsibility and sustainability are fast becoming essential factors in business decisions and Supply Chain Management and Logistics in the Global Fashion Sector leads the reader through the multiple stages in the supply chain that can impact on business strategy. A perfect resource for students studying fashion and for those working in the sector who wish to identify the latest thinking as they plan sustainability strategies, the book is divided into four clear sections. Part I of the book examines sustainability in the supply chain by identifying the three pillars of sustainability (social, economic and environmental) and considers how fashion brands are innovating in this area. Part II looks at fashion logistics and supply chain operations by assessing fibre, yarn and fabric considerations, logistical issues for both garment production, and service delivery, stock control, transportation, barriers and risks. Part III develops the logistics theme further by identifying recent trends and case studies that highlight agility and lean management structures, and the application of transparency enhancing radio frequency identification (RFID). This section further applies modelling and simulation techniques from the automotive and pharmaceutical industries to the fashion sector. Part IV considers how sustainability can be embedded into the multi-tiered fashion supply chain and its selling environment.

Rethinking Fashion Globalization is a timely call to rewrite the fashion system and push back against Eurocentric dominance within fashion histories by presenting new models, approaches and understandings of fashion from critical thinkers at the forefront of decolonial fashion discourse. This edited collection draws together original, diverse, and richly reflective critiques of the fashion system from both established and emerging fashion scholars, researchers and creative practitioners. Chapters straddle current calls for decolonization and inclusion, as well as reflections on de-westernization, post-colonialism, sustainability, transnationalism, national identities, social activism, global fashion narratives, diversity, and more. The volume is divided into three key themes, 'Disruptions in Time and Space', 'Nationalism and Transnationalism' and 'Global Design Practices'. These themes re-map fashion's origins, practices and futures, to present alternatives for reclaiming and rethinking fashion globalization in the 21st century.

Fashion is bound up with promoting the 'new', concerned with constantly changing aesthetics. The favoured styles or looks of a season arise out of the work of a vast range of different actors who collectively produce, select, distribute and promote the new ideals, before moving on to next season. How, then, are fashionable commodities stabilized long enough for them to be selected, distributed and sold? Since there are few studies that actually examine the work that goes on inside the world of fashion, we know little about these processes. This book addresses this gap in our knowledge by examining how aesthetic products are defined, distributed and valued. It focuses attention on the work of some of the market agents, particularly model agents or 'bookers' and fashion buyers, shaping the aesthetics inside their markets. In analysing their work, Entwistle develops a theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive features of aesthetic marketplaces and the aesthetic calculations within them.

Winner of the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook / PrimerHow did you decide what to wear today? Did you base your selection on comfort or style? Did you want to blend in or stand out -- or was it just the cleanest outfit available? We each make these decisions every day, reflecting how we view ourselves and impacting how others see us. Our choices matter -- not just to us personally, but also to the magazine editors, brand ambassadors and trend forecasters who make a living by selling to us. Communicating Fashion introduces key concepts from the intersecting worlds of fashion and communication studies to connect how we all use clothing to express ourselves and how media systems support that process. In doing so, Myles Ethan Lascity explores social, cultural and ethical issues through the work of fashion journalism, brand promotions and the growing role of online influencers as well as the impact of film, television and art on self-image and expression.Key topics:- Advertising, Branding and Fashion Retail- Clothing, Art and Cultural Significance- Clothing as Group and Cultural Norms- Clothing, Identity and Interpersonal Communication- Fashion News and Tastemaking- Fashion, Social Media and Influencers- Meaning within the Fashion System- On-screen Clothing

"In Couture Culture, Nancy Troy offers a new model of how art and fashion were linked in the early twentieth century. Focusing on a leader of the French fashion industry, Paul Poiret, Troy uncovers a logic of fashion based on the tension between originality and reproduction that bears directly on art historical issues of the period. This tension lies at the heart of haute couture, which, although designed for the wealthy, was also intended to be adapted for sale in department stores and other clothing outlets that catered to a broader consumer market. Troy examines the relationships between elite and popular culture, the professional theater and the fashion show, as well as the presumed polarity between classical and Orientalist sensibilities.
She shows how Poiret and other designers patronized the arts and presented themselves as artists not only to sell their individual dresses to wealthy clients but also to promote the mass production of their designs. The contradictions she uncovers suggest surprising parallels with the ready mades and fashion-related work of Marcel Duchamp, who explored the questions of originality and authenticity raised by couture culture during the 1910's and 1920's." "In contrast to dominant accounts of early twentieth-century art that have dismissed fashion as superficial, fleeting, and feminized, Troy's more nuanced approach reveals conceptual structures and marketing strategies shared by modern art and fashion in these years."--Jacket.

The make-take-waste paradigm of fast fashion explains much of the producer and consumer behavior patterns towards fast fashion. The evolution from a two-season fashion calendar to fast fashion, characterized by rapid product cycles from retailers and impulse buying by consumers, presents new challenges to the environment, workplace and labour practices. This book provides a comprehensive overview of new insights into consumer behaviour mechanisms in order to shift practices toward sustainable fashion and to minimize the negative impacts of fast fashion on the environment and society. Concepts and techniques are presented that could overcome the formidable economic drivers of fast fashion and lead toward a future of sustainable fashion. While the need for change in the fashion industry post-Rana Plaza could not be more obvious, alternative and more sustainable consumption models have been under-investigated. The paucity of such research extends to highly consumptive consumer behaviours regarding fast fashion (i.e. impulse buying and throwaways) and the related impediments these behaviours pose for sustainable fashion. Written by leading researchers in the field of sustainable fashion and supported by the Textile Institute, this book evaluates fashion trends, what factors have led to new trends and how the factors supporting fast fashion differ from those of the past. It explores the economic drivers of fast fashion and what social, environmental and political factors should be maintained, and business approaches adopted, in order for fast fashion to be a sustainable model. In particular, it provides consumer behaviour concepts that can be utilized at the retail level to support sustainable fashion.

The fashion business permeates our lives, influencing how we perceive and express ourselves in our environment. The brands and the firms that shaped this industry have, in many ways, defined the fashion business. This book provides the first authoritative history of the global fashion industry, from its emergence to the present day, with a focus on the entrepreneurs at the nucleus of many of the world's influential brands. It shows how successive generations of entrepreneurs built and developed the brands too, democratizing access to fashion brands throughout the world. Today, the fashion industry is going through a revolution¿one that, to date, has not been written about in academic literature. If we look at history, we can predict the trajectory of the revolution that is happening today and what it means for brands and businesses that have to make necessary adjustments. This book includes case studies and interviews that Neri Karra have conducted over 10 years with designers, managers, CEOs, and influential figures in fashion. It explores the emerging culture of street style and blogging, comparing that to the dawn of the nineteenth-century fashion brands and industry. Fashion has become a huge industry that not only affects our daily lives, but also has an impact on other non¿fashion related industries. It is remarkable that so little has been written about the extraordinary people who turn fashion into a business. This book fills this void for students of fashion and the entrepreneurs that will shape the next generation of the fashion business.

The book highlights how the signs of fashion showcase stories, hybridations, forms of feeling, from the classics of fashion in cinema, to fashion as cultural tradition in the global world, to digital media. Based on a strong socio-semiotic method (Barthes, The Language of Fashion is the main reference), the book crosses some of the main aspects of the contemporary culture of the clothed body: from time and space, to gender, to fashion as cultural translation, to the narratives included in the media convergence of our age. According to Jurji Lotman, fashion introduces the dynamic principle into seemingly inert spheres of the everyday. Fashion's unexpected function of overturning received meaning is conveyed through its collocation within the dynamic storehouse of what Lotman calls the "sphere of the unpredictable." In this horizon, the concept of fashion as a worldly system of sense (Benjamin) generates different "worlds" through its signs. 

The Fundamentals of Fashion Management provides an in-depth look at the changing face of today's fiercely competitive fashion industry. Providing invaluable behind-the-scenes insights into the roles and processes of the industry, this book combines creative and business approaches for all those seeking to gain a solid understanding of what it means to work in the fashion sector. Packed with new visuals, case studies and exercises, The Fundamentals of Fashion Management also contains new interviews with key players from different sectors in the global fashion industry, including with a fashion forecaster, a brand account manager, a fashion buyer, a digital marketing manager, fashion journalist, and a fashion entrepreneur. With an additional new chapter on entrepreneurship and management, this a must-have handbook for all those looking to create successful business practice in fashion management, marketing, buying, retailing and related fields.

Fashion is ever-changing, and while some styles mark a dramatic departure from the past, many exhibit subtle differences from year to year that are not always easily identifiable. With overviews of each key period and detailed illustrations for each new style, How to Read a Dress is an appealing and accessible guide to women's fashion across five centuries. Each entry includes annotated color images of historical garments, outlining important features and highlighting how styles have developed over time, whether in shape, fabric choice, trimming, or undergarments. Readers learn how garments were constructed and where their inspiration stemmed from at key points in history - as well as how dresses have varied in type, cut, detailing and popularity according to the occasion and the class, age and social status of the wearer. This new edition includes additional styles to illustrate and explain the journey between one style and another; larger images to allow closer investigation of details of dress; examples of lower and working-class, as well as middle-class, clothing; and a completely new chapter covering the 1980s to 2020. The latter demonstrates how the late 20th century and early 21st century firmly left the dress behind as a requirement, but retained it as a perennially popular choice and illustrates how far the traditional boundaries of 'the dress' have been pushed (even including reference to a newly non-binary appreciation of the garment), and the intellectual shifts in the way women's fashion is both inspired and inspires. With these new additions, How to Read a Dress, revised edition, presents a complete and up-to-date picture of 'the dress' in all its forms, across the centuries, and taking into account different sartorial and social experiences. It is the ideal tool for anyone who has ever wanted to know their cartridge pleats from their Récamier ruffles. Equipping the reader with all the information they need to 'read' a dress, this is the ultimate guide for students, researchers, and anyone interested in historical fashion.

An innovative history of the fashion industry, focusing on the connections between Paris and New York, art and finance, and design and manufacturing.Fashion is one of the most dynamic industries in the world, with an annual retail value of $3 trillion and globally recognized icons like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. How did this industry generate such economic and symbolic capital?Focusing on the roles of entrepreneurs, designers, and institutions in fashion's two most important twentieth-century centers, Paris to New York tells the history of the industry as a negotiation between art and commerce. In the late nineteenth century, Paris-based firms set the tone for a global fashion culture nurtured by artistic visionaries. In the burgeoning New York industry, however, the focus was on mass production. American buyers, trend scouts, and designers crossed the Atlantic to attend couture openings, where they were inspired by, and often accused of counterfeiting, designs made in Paris. For their part, Paris couturiers traveled to New York to understand what American consumers wanted and to make deals with local manufacturers for whom they designed exclusive garments and accessories. The cooperation and competition between the two continents transformed the fashion industry in the early and mid-twentieth century, producing a hybrid of art and commodity.Véronique Pouillard shows how the Paris-New York connection gave way in the 1960s to a network of widely distributed design and manufacturing centers. Since then, fashion has diversified. Tastes are no longer set by elites alone, but come from the street and from countercultures, and the business of fashion has transformed into a global enterprise.

How has Paris, the world's fashion capital, influenced Milan, New York, and Tokyo? When did the Marlboro Man become a symbol of American masculinity? Why do Americans love to dress down in high-tech Lycra fabrics, while they wax nostalgic for quaint, old-fashioned Victorian cottages? Fashion icons and failures have long captivated the general public, but few scholars have examined the historical role of business and commerce in creating the international market for style goods. "Producing Fashion" is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that shows how economic institutions in Europe and North America laid the foundation for the global fashion system and sustained it commercially through the mechanisms of advertising, licensing, marketing, publishing, and retailing. The collection reveals how public and private institutions from government censors in imperial Russia to large corporations in the United States worked to shape fashion, style, and taste with varying degrees of success. Fourteen contributors draw on original research and fresh insight into the producers of fashion advertising agents, architects, corporate executives, department stores, designers, editors, government officials, hairdressers, haute couturiers, and Web retailers in their bid for influence, acclaim, and shoppers' dollars. "Producing Fashion" looks to the past, revealing the rationale behind style choices, while explaining how the interplay of custom, invented traditions, and sales imperatives continue to drive innovation in the fashion industries."

A thorough, comprehensive guide to the luxury goods industry for executives, entrepreneurs, and students interested to know about the luxury business As key new luxury markets like Asia, Latin America and Africa continue to expand, The Road to Luxury: The Evolution, Markets and Strategies of Luxury Brand Management gives professionals interested in the industry a holistic understanding of luxury market dynamics around the world using stories, experiences, relevant data and statistics on current market trends. For investors, the book offers valuable insight on where the industry is headed. For industry insiders and executives, it presents valuable data with which to craft successful business strategies. The definitive insider's guide to the luxury sector by leading figures in the field  Includes rigorous academic data, including information on the business attractiveness and appropriateness of various country markets  Examines strategies and success factors of key players, and insight into the systems and operations, retail, distribution and e-commerce, emerging markets and emerging brands, as well as management styles For professionals in the luxury industry, as well as those studying it or investing in it, The Road to Luxury presents a complete and information-packed resource covering virtually every aspect of this growing sector.

This book examines the ways in which luxury fashion brands use their heritage in their digital storytelling and marketing. With chapters from authors in China and Macau (PRC), India, Romania, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, covering British, Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian, Italian, and Turkish brands, this truly global collection is the first book of its kind devoted solely to the emerging study of digital heritage storytelling. This method of reaching potential consumers and perpetuating brand identity is a hugely important factor in the marketing of luxury brands and has yet to be studied comprehensively. The book will be of interest to scholars working in fashion studies, fashion history, design history, design studies, digital humanities, and fashion marketing.

Numerous tastemakers exist in and between fashion production and consumption, from designers and stylists to trend forecasters, buyers, and journalists. How and why are each of these players bound up in the creation and dispersion of trends? In what ways are consumers' relations to trends constructed by these individuals and organizations? This book explores the social significance of trends in the global fashion industry through interviews with these 'fashion intermediaries', offering new insights into their influential roles in the setting and shaping of trends. The Trendmakers contains exclusive interviews with financial analysts, creative directors from high street stores like H&M to designer brands such as Erdem, trend forecasters at WGSN, buyers from Harvey Nichols, and major fashion names like The Telegraph fashion critic Hilary Alexander. In contrast to existing research, Lantz offers an international understanding of the trend landscape, engaging with industry professionals from fashion capitals like London, Paris, and New York, as well as BRIC countries and the new, emerging fashion nations. The fashion media may have declared that 'trends are dead' in the light of digital dissemination, but Lantz argues that trends still not only serve as a significant organizing principle for the fashion industry as a whole but also as a source for legitimacy. Engaging with classic fashion thinkers like Veblen, Simmel, and Bourdieu, as well as contemporary scholars like Entwistle and Steele, this book considers trends from an economic and cultural perspective to add to our knowledge of the complexities of the business of fashion.

Proposing a comprehensive account of the global fashion industry this book aims to present fashion as a social and cultural fact. Drawing on six principles from the industry, Godart guides the reader through the economic, social and political arena of the world's most glamorous industry.

'Riello and McNeil's new collection of essays represents an immense and impressive project' - Choice 'Now, the key contributions from nearly every expert in the field are assembled in one fascinating book. This kaleidoscopic and informative volume ranges impressively across conventional boundaries of chronology, geography, and discipline.' - Glenn Adamson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 'This book is indispensable for anyone interested in fashion. History has never been more alive than in the pages of this Reader.' - Patrizia Calefato, University of Bari, Italy The Fashion History Reader is an innovative work that provides a broad introduction to the complex literature in the fields of fashion studies, and dress and fashion history. Twenty-three chapters and over forty shorter 'Snapshot' texts cover a wide range of topics and approaches within the history of fashion, ranging from object-based studies to theory-driven analyses. The book is divided into six parts, surveying some of the key themes in the history of fashion. Themes also move in and across time, providing a chronology to enable student learning: parts one to three cover the fifteenth to the eighteenth-century parts four and five cover the nineteenth-century to the contemporary (with particular attention given to non-European countries) part six provides a survey of the global setting and current globalized nature of fashion. A comprehensive introduction by the editors contextualizes debates for students, synthesising past history and bringing them up-to-date through a discussion of globalization. Each section also includes a short, accessible introduction by the editors, placing each chapter within the wider, thematic treatment of fashion and its history, and an 'Annotated Guide to Further Reading' encourages students to enhance their learning independently. The Fashion History Reader was awarded a prize for 'Best Edited Book' at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand: Art Historians of Australasia, Annual General Meeting, December 2011.

How wealthy American women--as consumers and as influencers--helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century; lavishly illustrated. French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic--think of John Singer Sargent's Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their American customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers' influential clientele--wealthy American women who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders from the United States. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women--as high-volume customers and as pre-Internet influencers--were active participants in the era's transnational fashion system. Block describes the arrival of nouveau riche Americans on the French fashion scene, joining European royalty, French socialites, and famous actresses on the client rosters of the best fashion houses--Charles Frederick Worth, Doucet, and Felix, among others. She considers the mutual dependence of couture and coiffure; the participation of couturiers in international expositions (with mixed financial results); the distinctive shopping practices of American women, which ranged from extensive transatlantic travel to quick trips downtown to the department store; the performance of conspicuous consumption at balls and soirees; the impact of American tariffs on the French fashion industry; and the emergence of smuggling, theft, and illicit copying of French fashions in the American market as the middle class emulated the preferences of the rich. Lavishly illustrated, with vibrant images of dresses, portraits, and fashion plates, Dressing Up reveals the power of American women in French couture. Winner of the Aileen Ribeiro Grant of the Association of Dress Historians; an Association for Art History grant; and a Pasold Research Fund grant.

Paris has been the international capital of style for three hundred years. Although challenged by other fashion cities such as Milan, London and New York, Paris remains special. This fascinating book shows that the strength of the French fashion industry rests on the depth and sophistication of its fashion culture. Revised and updated, Paris Fashion is reprinted here in paperback for the first time. More than just a history of famous designers and changing styles, the book is about fashion as a cultural ideal and a social phenomenon. By focusing on a 'case study' of Paris, Steele provides brilliant insights into the significance of fashion in modern urban society.

Published in summer 2010 in print and online, the 10-volume Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion is the first comprehensive reference work to explore all aspects of dress and fashion globally - from pre-history to the present day. Arranged geographically and written by an international team of experts, the Encyclopedia will serve as the go-to source for all issues relating the art and anthropology of costume, dress, and fashion the world over for students, scholars, members of the design and fashion industries, and fashion aficionados for years to come. The Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion brings together for the first time the work of over 600 renowned scholars from every part of the globe. All articles have been specially commissioned and particular effort has been made to commission articles by indigenous scholars with in-depth local knowledge. 2011 Booklist Editors' Choice