Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers

by Regina Lee Blaszczyk (Editor)

Named "Best of the Best from the University Presses" in 2008 by the American Library Association 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.

Genres: Fashion

376 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2007

About the author

Regina Lee Blaszczyk is Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society at the University of Leeds and an associate editor at the Journal of Design History. Her books include Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning, Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture and Consumers, and American Consumer Society, 1865-2005: From Hearth to HDTV.

Reviews

[Mark Censor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating stories and analysis at the intersection of fashion and economics. Explore the history of Lycra, Marlboro, Christian Dior, pioneering department store Grandi Magazzini, and more.

[Anna Mosca · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a long time to go through this book, interesting at times but for the most part boring and academic. The way the subjects, that vary from the both of fashion, to girdles, to hair styles and to homes (?), are treated is not compact and uniform but the author ficuses at times way to long on some issues and goes by too fast on other interesting ones. To me, being generous, it’s a 2.75 star read

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was alright. However, there was very little information I found truly interesting. It was very hard to get through and I found myself wanting to skip or skim through just to get it done.

The topics were so wide that it was hard to find any cohesion but so random that it was difficult to create a full picture in one's mind.

[Karla · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a historical text from a business perspective, yet lacks enough photographs to wake you up and keep you engaged. Not thrilled- found it challenging to get through and didn't find it at all insightful