Fashion City Research Articles

Dreams of Small Nations in a Polycentric Fashion World

Fashion production has been split between a globalized clothing industry, which tends towards extreme centralization, and localized designer fashion sectors, acting as intermediaries between international suppliers and national events, media, and public. Under these conditions, designer fashion takes on national significance, in terms of staging events and displays, and engaging with cultural references outside the field of fashion. This article explores how such place-making abilities structure the polycentric world of fashion, taking the United Nations Security Council as a model for the interaction between first- and second-tier fashion cities. The article analyzes the rhetoric of new fashion centers as a traveling discourse that detaches fashion design from the concerns of textile and clothing industries and links it with those of cultural institutions and governments. It also examines how notions of cultural superiority have held European designers back from giving local flavor to their designs, but how there has recently been an approximation between fashion and folk culture.

Mass customisation in the Hong Kong apparel industry

Mass customisation (MC) is a prominent topic in apparel production planning and control and we have seen cases of its successful implementation in places such as the US, Japan and many European countries. Despite being called an international fashion city, Hong Kong (HK) is a place where most well-known MC programmes in fashion retailing are absent. Motivated by this observation, we conducted an empirical study by distributing questionnaires to industrialists. Our statistical analysis reveals that high expenses, insufficient technology, high level of customer involvement and inefficient operations are the significant barriers that hinder the development of MC in HK. Six managerial implications and recommendations are proposed. We believe that the findings can supplement the literature by providing evidence to explain the underdevelopment of MC in HK and some other markets.

Barcelona’s Urban Landscape

Barcelona’s urban characteristics and its tourist appeal are not merely outcomes of the Modernist period or a recent dramatic urban transformation but rather the result of a long and tumultuous historic evolution. The present article presents an account of relevant historical, political, economic, and social forces shaping Barcelona’s urban evolution from the medieval times until the 1970s. The urban history of Barcelona illustrates how the landscape of a fashionable city is the result of urban planning in conjunction with many social, economic, and political events that often produce unexpected results.

2006 F/W 런던/파리, 뉴욕, 서울 크로스 컬쳐럴 스트릿 패션 고찰

The purpose of this study was to identify differences or similarities across the ensembles of 2006 F/W fashion trends in the big fashion centers such as Paris, London, New York, and Seoul, by street fashion research. The study focuses on understanding of localized fashion trend in the marketplace. We used photograph observation and analyzed data by SPSS program. We found there is a significant difference in winter outfits at these different global fashion mega cities. Most Korean women were wearing light colored outer jackets and blue jeans were dominant style for pants. The majority of Paris/London, New York and Seoul people on the street were wearing wool/wool like coat. Padded coats were worn more by New Yorkers than by people in Seoul. For the bottom, there is a similarity between Paris/London, and New York City, in that skinny pants were popular. Koreans were wearing skinny pants mostly, but the percentage of mini skirts/shorts was also higher than any other cities. We found that the cross-cultural fashion mega trend is similar in clusters, but there is a slight difference of trend in clothing color, style and design details, and accessories by localized fashion cities. Not only direct observation but also identification of cultural characteristics and consumer behavior through the years will bring much more contributions to apparel industries.

The library of the Fashion Museum, Province of Antwerp: a collection and an objective

Although the library of the Fashion Museum of Province of Antwerp is only five years old, it already boasts an exciting history. Evolved from the collection of the national Vrieselhof Textiles and Costume Museum, the Fashion Museum Library opened its doors in 2002, in the heart of Antwerp, the Fashion City. This article relates the history of this library, with a look at both today and the future, attempting to pinpoint the uniqueness of what it means to manage a collection on the phenomenon of ‘contemporary fashion’.

Local–Global Development Trajectories: The Municipality and the Fashion Industry in Dunedin, New Zealand

The once-prosperous, but physically isolated, city of Dunedin waned economically in the last three decades of the 20th century. In an attempt to revitalise economic and social development, the Dunedin City Council, amongst other things, has in the 21st century embarked on a vigorous ‘rebranding’ and cluster development exercise. Part of the aim has been to dispel negative perceptions of the city that have been based around a conservative Scottish heritage and gloomy weather, and instead celebrate the innovative and captivating elements of the city that might attract new residents, businesses and greater economic activity. Marketing has been based on the slogan ‘I am Dunedin’. An associated aspect of this development has been the showcasing and fostering of the Dunedin fashion design sector ‘I am fashion Dunedin’. The city has on occasions claimed the title ‘Fashion capital of New Zealand’. However, even the fashion industry in the city recognises that this is more hype than reality. Nevertheless, the story of fashion success is one that has been easily consumed in the national media. The path taken by the municipality is in keeping with nationally endorsed regional development and internationalisation visions. Yet how far will a municipality go in its story-telling about its own city as part of an attempt to compete in a national or global market? In this paper connections are teased-out between the fashion industry, sector clustering and city marketing in the Dunedin context. The research output is a result of a qualitative analysis of intensive interviews with local government officials, fashion houses and their support industry in Dunedin.

Selling Avant-garde: How Antwerp Became a Fashion Capital (1990—2002)

During the 1990s, the Belgian city of Antwerp underwent a branding process as a fashion city. This example does not follow the pattern of contemporary fashion cities, which are chiefly based on major trade activity around fashion. Unlike other celebrated fashion capitals (London, Milan, New York or Paris), Antwerp never hosted any Fashion Week. Conversely, Antwerp's status as a fashion capital was created within the logic of organised tourism and mega-cultural events. The intertwining of both public and private networks of influence resulted in fashion's becoming absorbed by the local institutions as Antwerp's most characteristic creative industry.

Paris Fashion: A Cultural History

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. The author, an internationally recognized authority on the history of fashion, is the author of many books, including Fashion and Eroticism, Women of Fashion: 20th-Century Designers, Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power, and Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now. Reprinted August 1999.

Fu'ad Siraj al-Din and the Egyptian Wafd

The career of Fu'ad Pasha Siraj al-Din has attracted no sustained attention in either Arabic or Western-language histories of modern Egypt. His name flits through accounts of Egyptian politics in the last decade before the 1952 revolution a sentence here, a paragraph there but no-one tells much about him. He appears as the strong man behind the aging Wafdist leader Mustafa alNahhas, the reputed lover of Nahhas's wife Zaynab, a skillful political manipulator, and a reactionary landlord-pasha. But nowhere is there even a brief connected account of his life and political activities. Perhaps this should come as no surprise. Sa'd Zaghlul has only recently found a major if iconoclastic critical biographer,' and Nahhas has only his hagiographers. Yet without a knowledge of Siraj al-Din's career our understanding of the critical years leading up to the 1952 revolution must remain inadequate. This article focuses on Siraj al-Din's life and political career within the context of the larger history of Egypt, the Wafd party, and AngloEgyptian relations. Fu'ad Siraj al-Din's father and grandfather were landowners, pashas, and 'umdas (mayors) of their village Kafr al-Garayda in the delta province of Gharbiya.2 The father, Siraj al-Din Pasha Shahin (1879-1934) had studied in a French school in the provincial capital of Tanta. Like so many of Egypt's newly emerging landed aristocrats, he solidified the family's Cairo connexions in the 1920s, buying a luxurious villa in fashionable Garden City (at 10 Ahmad Pasha Street) and holding a seat in the parliaments of 1924, 1925, and 1931. His ornate baroque villa, which had belonged to the director of the Austrian bank, had once been decorated in an-