[...]... refusal of other tastes” (1984: 56) “Distinction and pretension, high culture and middle-brow culture like elsewhere high fashion and fashion, haute coiffure and coiffure, and so on—only Clothing, Fashion, and Society 15 exist through each other, and it is the relation, or rather the objective collaboration of their respective production apparatuses and clients which produces the value of culture and the. .. by a constant change of contents, which gives to the fashion of today an individual stamp as opposed to that of yesterday and of to-morrow, on the other hand because fashions differ for different classes the fashions of the upper stratum of society are never identical with those of the lower; in fact they are abandoned by the former as soon as the latter prepares to appropriate them (1904/1971: 296)... knockoffs of the graffiti inspired Vuitton bag (or the newer Murakami bag) that is featured in the pages of Vogue, sold on the streets and online While it is true that not all fashion originates in the upper classes, it is ultimately this group (and the designers and fashion editors who cater to their buying power) that controls and validates the discourse of fashion In the sense that Simmel speaks of, these... In the world of fashion many contradictory forces must be balanced all of which involve change versus stability; such as the drive for creative expression with the need for rational strategies in the interest of profitability, and the anchoring of the brand’s identity in the face of social, cultural and market shifts Within fashion firms, we find adaptations and conflicts connected more broadly to the. .. stage In Part II of this book, names of fashion designers, executives, and others that I have interviewed, with the exception of Hilfiger himself, have been changed—as have division names This is done in the interest of protecting the privacy of those mentioned in the book The reader should note that the information in this book represents the opinions and assessments of the author, and should not be... Society 9 and gold and silver brocade,” states Jennifer M Jones She continues, pointing out that the rest of the population “possessed an extremely limited wardrobe, comprising either coarse, homemade clothing or castoffs of the upper classes” (Jones 1994: 943) “To be ignorant of fashion was the lot of the poor the world over,” says Braudel (1979: 313) By the end of the eighteenth century, fashion extended... instances of fashion “bubbling-up” from the working-classes, the “street,” and from Clothing, Fashion, and Society 11 various subcultures the foremost among them being youth subcultures (Hebdige 1979; Polhemus 1994) Some earlier examples can also be found James Laver (2002: 77-79) attributes the slashed look, the practice of cutting slits in a garment so that the lining would be exposed, to the victory of the. .. that the company is making a hegemonic claim through an appropriated form of expression A luxury fashion house, and by extension the upper classes, may select any elements of the larger culture they choose, thereby conferring status Common street graffiti, originally an expression of disenfranchisement, 12 Designing Clothes becomes a sign of power when it is brandished by someone of high social and economic... (support or protest) at the level of personal, national and international relationships,” observes Hilda Kuper She claims the “rules of that structure are assimilated over time together with other rules of thought and behavior,” and though they may have “received less analytical scrutiny, they are as ‘real’ as rules of kinship, of land tenure, of spatial interaction, or any other rules of social communication”... towards the bluff or usurpation of social identity which consists in anticipating ‘being’ by ‘seeming’, appropriating the appearances so as to have the real, in trying to modify the representation of the ranks in the classification of the principles of classification.” Unlike the working classes, free of such concerns as Bourdieu would have it, the middle classes are “haunted by the judgments of others,” and . I The Fashion Industry 1. Clothing, Fashion, and Society 3 2. The Emergence of the Fashion Industry 35 3. The Fashion Designer 93 4. Leadership in the Fashion Industry 129 5. Organizational Culture. discuss theoretical approaches to understand- ing fashion none of them originating from those who have worked in fashion. I discuss fashion as a global industry and the rise of the designer. As the. ordinary clothes. Furs, silks, well-tailored clothes, or clothes with elite markers of one kind or another could trump cotton and ill-tailored clothes by anonymous makers. To cater to the needs of