Fashion is under the spotlight like never before. Activists call for environmental accountability, and wide-ranging debates highlight exploitation across global supply chains and the reliance on unpaid labour. Digital technology undermines traditional fashion companies, while small-scale independent fashion designers provide radical innovations in design and work in more socially inclusive ways.
This book contributes to a new sociology of fashion. Focusing on the working lives of independent designers and based on ethnographic research and interviews carried out in London, Berlin and Milan, the authors consider the urban policy regimes in place in these cities. They analyse how these regimes shape the microenterprises and the emerging political economy, as well as the structures needed for designers to flourish. They also develop several key concepts – the ‘milieu of fashion labour’, ‘social fashion’ and ‘fashion diversity’ – and chart the new world of digital fashion-tech and e-commerce.
Drawing on lessons from European initiatives and recognizing the capacity of microenterprises and start-ups to determine fashion’s future, the authors call for the industry to be significantly decentralized to ensure more diversity and less exclusivity.
Author(s): Daniel Strutt, Angela McRobbie, Carolina Bandinelli
Publisher: Polity
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 204
City: Cambridge
Cover
Title page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Fashion studies
New ways of doing fashion
The chapters
1 Critical Fashion Studies: Paradigms for Creative Industries Research
Introduction
Cultural policy
Milieu of labour
Art theory
The object itself
2 London: Independent Fashion and ‘Monopoly Rent’
Introduction: The ‘futures’ student as human capital
From the new King’s Cross to Hackney Wick Fish Island
The milieu of labour: London
Fashion independents: Making a living
The precarity of success?
Conclusion
3 Berlin: Microenterprises and the Social Face of Fashion
Introduction: The precarity of underemployment
The milieu of labour: Berlin
Fashion creativity in active neighbourhoods
Social fashion in the city
Fashion as art, fashion as social enterprise
Conclusion
4 Milan: Fashion Microenterprises and Female-led Artisanship
Introduction: City of global brands
The milieu of labour: Milan
Benetton and beyond
Female-led artisanship: Milanese small-scale fashion production
Conclusion
5 Click and Collect: Fashion’s New Political Economy
Introduction: The new political economy
The new world of ‘listing labour’
Designers in multimediated fashion worlds
Ajax, Birdsong and Not Just A Label
Conclusion
6 Conclusion
Appendix
Berlin
London
Milan
Events hosted
Methodological note
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1: Critical Fashion Studies: Paradigms for Creative Industries Research
Chapter 2: London: Independent Fashion and ‘Monopoly Rent’
Chapter 3: Berlin: Microenterprises and the Social Face of Fashion
Chapter 4: Milan: Fashion Microenterprises and Female-led Artisanship
Chapter 5: Click and Collect: Fashion’s New Political Economy
References
Further Reading
Index
EULA
