Producing fashion : commerce, culture, and consumers / editor, Regina Lee Blaszczyk.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Blaszczyk, Regina Lee, editor.

Series:

Hagley Perspectives on Business and Culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fashion design--20th century--History.

Fashion design.

Fashion merchandising--20th century--History.

Fashion merchandising.

Consumers' preferences--20th century--History.

Consumers' preferences.

Marketing--Management--20th century--History.

Marketing.

Product management--20th century--History.

Product management.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 363 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Rethinking fashion / Regina Lee Blaszczyk

PART I. Organizing the fashion trades

Chapter 2. Spreading the word : the development of the Russian fashion press / Christine Ruane

Chapter 3. Accessorizing, Italian style : creating a market for Milan's fashion merchandise / Elisabetta Merlo and Francesca Polese

Chapter 4. In the shadow of Paris? French haute couture and Belgian fashion between the wars / Veronique Pouillard

Chapter 5. Licensing practices at Maison Christian Dior / Tomoko Okawa

PART II. Inventing fashions, promoting styles

Chapter 6. The wiener werkstatte and the reform impulse / Heather Hess

Chapter 7. American fashions for American women : The rise and fall of fashion nationalism / Marlis Schweitzer

Chapter 8. Coiffing vanity : advertising celluloid toilet sets in 1920s America / Ariel Beaujot

PART III. Shaping bodies, building brands

Chapter 9. California casual : lifestyle marketing and men's leisurewear, 1930-1960 / William Scott

Chapter 10. Marlboro men : outside masculinities and commercial modeling in postwar America / Elspeth Brown

Chapter 11. The body and the brand : how Lycra shaped America / Kaori O'Connor

PART IV. Customer reactions, consumer adaptations

Chapter 12. French hairstyles and the elusive consumer / Steve Zdatny

Chapter 13. Ripping up the uniform approach: Hungarian women piece together a new communist fashion / Katalin Medvedev

Chapter 14. Why the old-fashioned is in fashion in American houses / Susan Matt.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [293]-348) and index.

ISBN:

1-283-89626-5

0-8122-0605-3

OCLC:

794702277