The Crossroad between Production and Consumption: An Introduction to Fashion as a Cultural Industry

The hardbook aims to collect a selected number of papers presented at the Third Global Conference on fashion, organized by IDnet and held in Oxford from the 22nd to the 25th of September 2011, exploring the world of fashion as a cultural industry as a point of convergence between two poles: the one of production, in which we include every process of ideation, designing and manufacturing carried out by professionals working in the fashion companies, and the one of production, an expression we use to identify the complex and heterogeneous group of social actors who face the apparel proposals, by buying (or not buying) clothes and - in so doing - putting them into their everyday lives as generators of meanings. Our perspective is grounded in socio-anthropological literature that has shown how the material culture and its objects are a magnifying glass to better understand the immaterial values rooted in the whole society. We are especially referring to the works of Paul Hirsch (1972) and Wendy Griswold (1986). The first author, analyzing the media industry, has developed an interpretative model - known as Hirsch???s scheme - that breaks up the cultural industry in four phases (design, manufacture, communication, and consumption), whilst the second one has proposed a «cultural diamond» to underline how cultural meanings are the result of a relationship between social world, creator, receiver, and cultural object. Both approaches can be applied to fashion to describe it as being a cultural industry and to affirm the perpetual connection between material contents and immaterial values in this field. Starting from these remarks, and promoting an interdisciplinary comparison between scholars afferent to various disciplines, the hardbook intends to deeply explore the concrete and material expressions of fashion that connect producers and consumers making the materiality a door to join the immaterial horizons of fashion. The organizational scheme of the book tries to reflect both this objective and Hirsch???s model. PART I is devoted to the designing and manufacturing processes. Molloy???s paper will explore work patterns and research ethics from the point of view of New Zealand fashion industry professionals; Bruggeman will analyze the purpose of embodying a strong identity in a fashion collection through the case of the Dutch designer Marlies Dekkers; Kirecci will deeply go into the side of fast fashion business and manufacturing model considering the experience of the Turkish chain LC Waikiki; Payne will take into consideration the mass market design practice in Australia. PART II focuses on fashion communication, investigating the point of view and the practices of: consumers, confused when facing to the increasing semiotic saturation of the fashion market (see Mora???s essay); fashion victims with their desire to get informed about fashion news (a desire that pre-exists the modern fashion media, as Taylor illustrates); designers using new media and social networks; fashion journalism, challenged by the rise of trickle-up ways of communication as fashion blogging is (Pederson). PART III completes the scheme by tackling the issue of fashion retailing, assuming that the selling is the ultimate part for the building of fashion immaterial values. Pedroni will trace a general overview on the phenomenon by mapping the new sales channels, whilst Winterhalter will concentrate on luxury malls and guerrilla stores, and Nobbs/Shearer on the vintage market; finally, McClendon???s chapter takes into consideration the online retail with its implications not only commercial, but also political.