Global socioeconomic networks of the apparel industry: the case of the Los Angeles Fashion District

Abstract

This study aims to identify the Fashion District as the point where the expansion of the global network meets a local context and to investigate the influence of the apparel industry’s global network on the spatial change of the Los Angeles Fashion District. Los Angeles apparel industry is expanding and restructuring its production network and global value chain through the alliance of various interest groups in the neoliberal system. The garment industry in the United States and Los Angeles has been heavily influenced by international institutions such as the multi-fiber arrangement. As the global production geography is reorganized and expanded due to changes in international systems and labor costs, the pan-pacific global value chain of China, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America, centering on the Los Angeles Fashion District is formed and functioned. In the business relationship between the firms in the production process, not only the cost but also the ethnicity of the subjects in charge of each production process tended to play an important role. Especially in the case of the Los Angeles apparel industry, the connectivity between Koreans located at each stage of production is emphasized. Korean manufacturers prefer Asian subcontractors rather than geographically far closer Latin American countries because of the cost of labor and the cost of establishing factories and the policies of the national and city governments, as well as socio-cultural characteristics such as co-ethnic relations.