High Street Fashion Research Articles

Intermediation in agile global fashion supply chains

Previous studies (such as Fung et al., 2007) have revealed that in industries characterized by high degrees of agility, fragmentation and globalization, such as the fashion sector, trade intermediaries play a significant role in integrating geographically dispersed value-chain activities. The typical tasks of an intermediary include sourcing, supplier quality control, shipping management and distribution. However, their ability to reduce costs and compress time along these activities and enhance the level of agility that fashion retailers are ultimately able to exhibit has received little attention in the literature. As a result, this paper explores the role of intermediaries as sourcing agents in agile fashion supply networks in a global context. The methodology employed involves two primary, exploratory case studies of UK based high street fashion retailers. The paper provides empirical evidence to highlight the role of trade intermediaries in increasing supply chain performance along two dimensions: total supply chain lead time and total supply chain costs.

Accessing and affording sustainability: the experience of fashion consumption within young families

AbstractDespite the ever increasing levels of fashion consumption, neither retailers nor consumers have as yet implemented sustainability principles to a significant degree. This is despite the fact that sustainability principles are increasingly understood and will be applied by consumers, as long as affordable alternatives in mainstream fashions are available. In a highly competitive fashion retail sector, there exists an opportunity for UK high street fashion retailers to differentiate their brand image through aligning products with consumers' moral frameworks. Using phenomenological interviews, this research explores the fashion consumption experiences of professional women with young children and living in or near Edinburgh, with particular focus on their expression of their own sustainability concerns in their day‐to‐day practices. The findings reveal that in the absence of suitable products, information and labelling, consumers apply heuristics to their choices, especially price. They refer to the more familiar ethical food market which serves as a metaphor for fashion‐related practices. They talk about trustworthy retailers and about how they deal with and rationalize their own practices where they reveal an obvious attitude‐behaviour gap. The women's role of providing for the family adds further complexity in a sector which provides affordable alternative options.

Clothing Benefits Sought: The Case of British Muslims

The purpose of this study is to explore British Muslims’ clothing benefits sought. Qualitative research was conducted through interviews to explore British Muslims’ clothing consumption. Following this, quantitative research was undertaken by means of a web based survey questionnaire with 30 items referring to clothing benefits sought. The usable questionnaire consisted of 222 respondents. Data analysis includes descriptive analysis, reliability and exploratory factor analysis. Six factors derived underpinned the clothing benefits sought among British Muslim consumers: “self congruity”, “social status”, “modesty”, “conformity”, “uniqueness” and “personal identity”. This study is the first one to explore clothing benefits sought among Muslim consumers in particular in the UK. This research was exploratory in nature and employed a non probability sampling method. The study provides a useful source of information, which can be used by UK high street fashion retailer regarding clothing benefits sought among British Muslim consumers in the UK.

Fashioned identity and the unreliable image

High street fashion is an important industry in economic as well as aesthetic and cultural terms. Fashions not only provide a social language based on easily recognized, high-circulating items but they also generate massive wealth. These visual icons and images globalize human experience to a significant extent while, at the same time, remaining problematic to read. For example, how well-recognized and globally accepted are the meanings around images of a full red-lipsticked mouth, an unbuttoned pristine business shirt, or spiked multi-coloured hair The history of the visual suggests that every image has multiple readings; there is no essence to the image, no limits to its commentary, no reassuring boundaries restricting its suggestions. The image is ubiquitous, problematic and enduringly pleasurable, even as its meanings are tantalizingly concealed. A fascinating example is explored in this article of the ethno-methodological folly of the late 1960s, when a hormone pill-popping young man convinced a myopic medical team to undertake the desired surgical reassignment of his gender. The con was affected on the basis of a skilful and smooth gender-bending performance that rested on the persuasiveness of the unreliable image.

The celebritisation of Carmen Miranda in New York, 1939–41

This article considers the process of celebritisation that Carmen Miranda rapidly underwent after arriving in the United States for the first time in 1939. It focuses upon the period she spent in New York (1939–41), performing on Broadway, prior to her move to Hollywood, and examines how she negotiated her move from Brazil to North America via a conscious process of auto-exoticisation, knowingly appropriating the self-tropicalising agenda of the regime of Brazilian president, Getúlio Vargas (1930–45), as exemplified in the Brazilian Pavilion at the World's Fair in New York of 1939–40. It analyses her celebrity text by examining intertexts such as press releases, interviews and reviews published in newspapers and magazines, and interrogates the impact of her involvement in product endorsement, chiefly in the area of women's high-street fashion. It aims to show the extent of her agency in the construction of her celebrity text, focusing in particular upon how her ethnic identity shifted in the move from South to North America, and seeks to offer a historical, evolutionary perspective on the concept of the bicultural celebrity. It concludes that she can be seen as one of the earliest examples of the transnational star, not simply famous in more than one national context but actively employing her inter-hemispheric, no-man's-land position in order to carve out a niche for herself in the US imaginary.

From Prada to Zara

PurposeThis paper aims to review recent press on the fashion industry, pointing out the key players, strategic wins and challenges ahead for both couture and the high street.Design/methodology/approachThis briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments.FindingsNo one who visits the high street this season, be it in the US, the UK or Europe, can fail to notice that the retail sector is having a tough time. Stores are relatively empty for the time of year. Sales have started weeks in advance of the traditional date. Incentives to buy scream from every window. Meanwhile, the newspapers tell of companies going bankrupt every day, and world leaders speak mostly of a global economic breakdown. Where, in this despondent picture, are the fashionistas?Practical implicationsThe paper offers advice on surviving through financial challenges from various fashion houses.Originality/valueThe paper considers how high end and high street fashion chains are managing to report good results despite the economic downturn.

Our Lady Hates Viscose: The Role of the Customer Image in High Street Fashion Production

This article seeks to lift the lid on the `black box' of fashion production by exploring the role of the customer image within the working practices of UK high street womenswear retailers. Following production of culture and symbolic interactionist approaches to the culture industries, the author suggests that the customer images — that is, practitioners' notions of the likes and dislikes of target customers — facilitate teamwork by smoothing conflicts that arise through the division of labour between designers, buyers and merchandizers. The customer image serves as an ordering principle that helps fashion workers to narrow down the wealth of competing ideas and generally guides their decision-making processes. The creation of colour palettes and `storyboards', as well as the selection and modification of sample garments, will be used as examples of how the ordering principle is applied by designers, buyers and merchandizers throughout the production process.

From Haute Couture to High Street: The Role of Shows and Fairs in Twentieth-Century Fashion

This article unravels the proliferation of 'fashion' with respect to clothing over the last half-century, putting the British perspective in the context of wider changes in European and American fashion production. Design innovation patterns evolved in the post-war world in response to growing markets and changes in social conditions. The concepts of 'design monopoly' and 'collective screening' are used to explain this phenomenon, with evidence from designer associations, trade exhibitions and international fashion shows to support this story. This article aims to offer a holistic account of interrelationships between haute couture and high street fashion and illustrates how the global fashion system has evolved.

Editors’ Choice

Editors’ Choice

Photojournalism in Flux?

OLIVER CHANARIN AND ADAM BROOMBERG: FIG. JOHN HANSARD GALLERY UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND FEBRUARY 6-MARCH 31, 2007 In the first half of the twentieth century, photography became an integral element of newspapers and magazines, with photojournalists effectively dispatching artist reporters to the rubbish bin of history. For some time, there have been fears that a similar fate awaits photojournalists. Their professional insecurity has multiple causes. Since the mid-twentieth century, television has been perceived as a threat, particularly with the arrival of 24-hour news stations in the 1990s. Politicians have also been blamed for restricting access, especially to war zones. Cultural theorists have been blamed for querying photography's evidential reputation from various angles. But lately, it has been amateurs--armed with camera phones at newsworthy events like Saddam Hussein's execution, and able to e-mail digital imagery to newspapers and television stations--who have provoked a new round of gloomy reflections on the future of professional photojournalism. [FIGURE 31 OMITTED] On the other hand, the first decade of the twenty-first century has also been marked by an unprecedented interest in documentary photography in fine art institutions. most obvious example is the last Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 2002, which concentrated on what the event's curator--New York City-based Okwui Enwezor termed counter-hegemonic strategies from the world's cultural margins, with photography a favored medium; or Cruel and Tender: Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph, the first major photography show at the newly opened Tate Modern in London in 2003. This exhibition was more sedate than the eleventh Documenta, yet the organizers shared Enwezor's assumption that photography continues to be a valuable medium for recording and commenting on the world. above remarks are relevant to any assessment of the photographic team Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, South African Jews who now live and work in London. Both still under forty, they have quickly established an international reputation with a fresh approach to documentary photography that is evident in books like Ghetto (2003), about various forms of institutional confinement; Mr. Mkhize's Portrait (2004), about post-apartheid South Africa; and most recently Chicago (2006), a chilling portrayal of contemporary Israel apparently reconciled to a state of permanent emergency. All of these projects bear traces of Broomberg and Chanarin's formative experience as creative directors of the magazine Colors. Published by the Italian clothing company Benetton, Colors was launched in 1991 to celebrate cultural relativism and global diversity, mainly via the universal language of photography. case against Benetton has been well rehearsed since the 1990s: that advertising campaigns and promotional magazines that blur traditional distinctions between news and commerce merely trivialize serious issues; or that the stress on human diversity is nothing more than a bland update of New York City's Museum of Modern Art's notorious mid-1950's exhibition The Family of Man. But a case for Benetton can also be made, especially if one references the editions of Colors edited by Broomberg and Chanarin, for instance, their 2003 issue on slavery (Colors 53), produced in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International. For many, human bondage is assumed to be merely of historic interest, but Broomberg and Chanarin deftly edit words and images to reveal its scandalous, present-day manifestations in various locations around the world, including the United States. Critics complain about the aestheticization of misery. Broomberg and Chanarin counter that they are exploring ways of addressing and raising the awareness of young people whose enthusiasm for high street fashion by no means precludes a willingness to seriously engage with current affairs. …

The Show Must Go On

This article presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the glamorization of the courtesan image as proposed by Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. The film sparked the appearance of high-street fashion inspired by the image of the 19th-century Parisian courtesan, which prompted the authors to examine how and why such images might appeal to female consumers. The critical analysis reaches beyond the images themselves to identify and discuss the modes of circulation of such images, and their function in achieving both the material ends of capitalism (ever-increasing consumption and production) and the promotion of one of the system’s core values (patriarchy). Moreover, the article hopes to illustrate the possibilities offered by integrating cultural and structural analyses of current social phenomena.

Fashion Culture: Creative Work, Female Individualization

This article explores some of the key dynamics of the UK fashion sector as an example of a post-industrial, urban based, cultural economy comprising of a largely youthful female workforce. It argues that the small scale, independent activities which formed the backbone of the success of British fashion design as an internationally recognized phenomenon from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, represented a form of female self-generated work giving rise to collaborative possibilities and co-operation. However without an effective lobby or association (despite the expansion of the fashion media) and under conditions of rapid individualization and in an increasingly harsh climate of neo-liberalization, this creative economy has been overtaken and virtually demolished by the joint forces of a re-vitalized high street fashion culture and the aggressive presence of corporate fashion (‘Prada-ization’). While the UK government celebrates the growth of the cultural economy, it also overlooks the processes making the livelihoods of its predominantly female workforce either untenable or else requiring de-specialization and ‘multi-tasking’.

Department stores refurbish their fashion policy: Zone and the new Way In

Zone at Harvey Nichols and the new Way In at Harrods both opened last autumn, aiming at high fashion shoppers who have traditionally spurned the conventional department store. Both opened to a blaze of publicity in magazines such as The Face (a favourite with the most avant of the avant garde), while prestigious design journals have waxed lyrical about the original shopfitting. But how do these new lifestyle departments really shape up to high street fashion competition?