This qualitative study introduces six creative fashion professionals, aged 55‐74, who started their careers in the 1980s. They have managed to overcome the complex challenges of employment and remain active in the highly competitive and youth-centric fashion industry of New York City. The participants represent key occupations that drive the behind-the-scenes creative force in the industry’s supply chain. While their long careers have equipped them with expertise, multiple transferable hard and soft skills and extensive professional networks, they have become a rare age demographic in the industry. We investigate the importance of professional experience that comes with age in the current workforce by exploring the participants’ self-reflections and assessments about their careers as ageing workers. We determine how exogenous factors such as globalization, trade agreements, changes in technology, the effect of politics and recessions, global health crises and endogenous factors, such as changes in positions, additional training and work‐life balance, have influenced their careers. We highlight the benefits of intergenerational teams in which older workers are effectively able to transfer knowledge to and collaborate with younger co-workers and vice versa. Employing insights of the theory of experience, continuity theory, social exchange theory and generational theory, the study shows that intergenerational collaboration is critical to mastering creative processes in the fashion and textiles industry. Our research uncovers this demographic’s collective experience, tacit knowledge and resilience and proclaims their passion for their professions. It also illuminates the strategies the participants employed to remain professionally relevant as they adapted to the shifting landscape of the global fashion industry.
{"title":"Age, experience and creative labour: Narratives of creative professionals over age 55 in the New York fashion industry","authors":"A. Mcinnis, Katalin Medvedev","doi":"10.1386/infs_00054_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00054_1","url":null,"abstract":"This qualitative study introduces six creative fashion professionals, aged 55‐74, who started their careers in the 1980s. They have managed to overcome the complex challenges of employment and remain active in the highly competitive and youth-centric fashion industry of New York\u0000 City. The participants represent key occupations that drive the behind-the-scenes creative force in the industry’s supply chain. While their long careers have equipped them with expertise, multiple transferable hard and soft skills and extensive professional networks, they have become\u0000 a rare age demographic in the industry. We investigate the importance of professional experience that comes with age in the current workforce by exploring the participants’ self-reflections and assessments about their careers as ageing workers. We determine how exogenous factors such\u0000 as globalization, trade agreements, changes in technology, the effect of politics and recessions, global health crises and endogenous factors, such as changes in positions, additional training and work‐life balance, have influenced their careers. We highlight the benefits of intergenerational\u0000 teams in which older workers are effectively able to transfer knowledge to and collaborate with younger co-workers and vice versa. Employing insights of the theory of experience, continuity theory, social exchange theory and generational theory, the study shows that intergenerational collaboration\u0000 is critical to mastering creative processes in the fashion and textiles industry. Our research uncovers this demographic’s collective experience, tacit knowledge and resilience and proclaims their passion for their professions. It also illuminates the strategies the participants employed\u0000 to remain professionally relevant as they adapted to the shifting landscape of the global fashion industry.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45925923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As fashion ‘goes viral’, adapting to digital popular cultural flows, streams, image aggregations and memes, there is a need for better grasping how these platforms feed into the aesthetics of mediations of fashion. Contemporary digitally mediated fashion is conditioned by what van Dijck and Poell refer to as a new media logic, one that permeates the ‘strategies, mechanisms, and economics underpinning these platforms’ dynamics’. This logic includes audience labour. This article focuses on how the audience is put to work and how such work becomes integral to the mediational aesthetic by using the Instagram account of Paris-based fashion brand Balenciaga as a heuristic device. In connecting perspectives from fashion and media studies, this article discusses how fashion mediation is entangled in processes that harness audience labour on Instagram. Balenciaga takes on communication strategies that expose the aesthetics of user engagement. On Instagram, the brand presents its take on fashion photography in the digital age as part of its visual identity on this platform. Furthermore, in feeding the comments section, users participate in ‘boundary maintenance’, separating Balenciaga insiders from outsiders who lack knowledge of the perpetually changing aesthetic codes of fashion imagery. Online audiences thus find themselves at the crossroads of consumption, production and gatekeeping.
{"title":"‘My favourite meme page’: Balenciaga’s Instagram account and audience fashion labour online","authors":"Synne Skjulstad","doi":"10.1386/infs_00052_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00052_1","url":null,"abstract":"As fashion ‘goes viral’, adapting to digital popular cultural flows, streams, image aggregations and memes, there is a need for better grasping how these platforms feed into the aesthetics of mediations of fashion. Contemporary digitally mediated fashion is conditioned by\u0000 what van Dijck and Poell refer to as a new media logic, one that permeates the ‘strategies, mechanisms, and economics underpinning these platforms’ dynamics’. This logic includes audience labour. This article focuses on how the audience is put to work and how such work becomes\u0000 integral to the mediational aesthetic by using the Instagram account of Paris-based fashion brand Balenciaga as a heuristic device. In connecting perspectives from fashion and media studies, this article discusses how fashion mediation is entangled in processes that harness audience labour\u0000 on Instagram. Balenciaga takes on communication strategies that expose the aesthetics of user engagement. On Instagram, the brand presents its take on fashion photography in the digital age as part of its visual identity on this platform. Furthermore, in feeding the comments section, users\u0000 participate in ‘boundary maintenance’, separating Balenciaga insiders from outsiders who lack knowledge of the perpetually changing aesthetic codes of fashion imagery. Online audiences thus find themselves at the crossroads of consumption, production and gatekeeping.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48706250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Review of: Le travail n’est pas une marchandise: Contenu et sens du travail au XXIe siècle, Alain Supiot (2019)Paris: Éditions du Collège de France, Collection Leçons de clôture, vol. 17, 72 pp.,ISBN 978-2-72260-513-8, p/bk, €6.80https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.7026, EPUB, free
《工作不是商品:21世纪工作的内容和意义》,Alain Supiot(2019),巴黎:editions du college de France, closed courses Collection,第17卷,72页,ISBN 978-2-72260-513-8, p/bk,€6.80https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.7026, EPUB,免费
{"title":"Le travail n’est pas une marchandise: Contenu et sens du travail au XXIe siècle, Alain Supiot (2019)","authors":"Sophie Kurkdjian","doi":"10.1386/infs_00058_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00058_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Le travail n’est pas une marchandise: Contenu et sens du travail au XXIe siècle, Alain Supiot (2019)Paris: Éditions du Collège de France, Collection Leçons de clôture, vol. 17, 72 pp.,ISBN 978-2-72260-513-8,\u0000 p/bk, €6.80<uri xlink:href=\"https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.7026\">https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.7026</uri>, EPUB, free","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41542629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This practice-based article examines an attempt to reconnect fashion labour with value, after the fast fashion system increased the gap between the two. Developed by Norwegian fashion brand and collective platform HAiKw/ (Harald Lunde Helgesen and Ida Falck Øien), the Drop-in Factory was a fashion design experiment conducted at the non-profit art space Kunsthall Oslo in 2019. In this experiment, labour was outsourced to consumers-visitors, who by contract paid for equipment rental and training, earning ‘Factory Coins’ that could only be spent on the finished product. Inviting amateurs to make their own garment in a workshop setting has become a common strategy of design activism in fashion. However, instead of focusing on teaching individuals craft expertise, the Drop-in Factory explored collective making practices in an industrial-like environment, inspired by manufacturing and scientific management. Tensions arose over pay when some participants felt that their labour was unfairly compensated. As a response, roleplaying emerged from the experiment. Interviews of participants, conducted months later, incidentally echoed roleplay debriefing sessions. Their accounts show that they acquired labour literacy and embodied knowledge of fashion manufacturing, which extended to contracts and remuneration. While it remains unclear whether the Drop-in Factory led participants to revalue fashion labour, audience participation itself became the mediation of fashion labour.
{"title":"‘No, YOU make it!’: Outsourcing production to fashion consumers to mediate labour","authors":"Ida Falck Øien, Johanna Zanon","doi":"10.1386/infs_00053_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00053_1","url":null,"abstract":"This practice-based article examines an attempt to reconnect fashion labour with value, after the fast fashion system increased the gap between the two. Developed by Norwegian fashion brand and collective platform HAiKw/ (Harald Lunde Helgesen and Ida Falck Øien), the Drop-in\u0000 Factory was a fashion design experiment conducted at the non-profit art space Kunsthall Oslo in 2019. In this experiment, labour was outsourced to consumers-visitors, who by contract paid for equipment rental and training, earning ‘Factory Coins’ that could only be spent on\u0000 the finished product. Inviting amateurs to make their own garment in a workshop setting has become a common strategy of design activism in fashion. However, instead of focusing on teaching individuals craft expertise, the Drop-in Factory explored collective making practices in an industrial-like\u0000 environment, inspired by manufacturing and scientific management. Tensions arose over pay when some participants felt that their labour was unfairly compensated. As a response, roleplaying emerged from the experiment. Interviews of participants, conducted months later, incidentally echoed\u0000 roleplay debriefing sessions. Their accounts show that they acquired labour literacy and embodied knowledge of fashion manufacturing, which extended to contracts and remuneration. While it remains unclear whether the Drop-in Factory led participants to revalue fashion labour, audience\u0000 participation itself became the mediation of fashion labour.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48520306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The oral history programme at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York (1977‐present)","authors":"K. Trivette","doi":"10.1386/infs_00055_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00055_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66717427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article looks at the French retail chain Prisunic’s fashion production in the 1960s and, in particular, at the collective and invisible labour of its creative studio established in 1953. It examines the processes by which Prisunic evolved from selling clothes, infamous for their shabbiness, to selling fashion during the 1960s. First, this article focuses on the organization of Prisunic. Second, it turns to the interactions between Prisunic as a fashion producer and cultural intermediaries such as forecasting agencies. Specifically, it analyses how Maïmé Arnodin’s ‘colour books’ became instrumental to Prisunic’s design process. Third, it considers the diversity of occupations within the studio, including stylist, fashion designer, fashion photographer, graphic designer and typographer, and considers their interactions. Fourth, the article delves into the interpersonal relations of studio members with fashion journalists and editors, as well as structural interactions between fashion producers and fashion media. Especially, it questions the role of French Elle in the visual and discursive construction of Prisunic’s commodities as the product of creative labour. The article draws on sociologist Michel Callon’s focus on ‘agencies’ and ‘material devices’, which are instrumental in shaping markets and the cultural economy. Further, it builds on sociologist Liz McFall’s characterization of material devices as shaped by the interaction of institutional, organizational and technological arrangements to analyse the studio’s labour practices within Prisunic, upstream with its suppliers and downstream with the press. This article traces the processes, interactions and arrangements that make up Prisunic’s styling streams.
{"title":"Labouring up and down Prisunic’s styling streams: The creative studio of a retail chain in 1960s France","authors":"Sophie Chapdelaine de Montvalon","doi":"10.1386/infs_00051_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00051_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at the French retail chain Prisunic’s fashion production in the 1960s and, in particular, at the collective and invisible labour of its creative studio established in 1953. It examines the processes by which Prisunic evolved from selling clothes, infamous for\u0000 their shabbiness, to selling fashion during the 1960s. First, this article focuses on the organization of Prisunic. Second, it turns to the interactions between Prisunic as a fashion producer and cultural intermediaries such as forecasting agencies. Specifically, it analyses how Maïmé\u0000 Arnodin’s ‘colour books’ became instrumental to Prisunic’s design process. Third, it considers the diversity of occupations within the studio, including stylist, fashion designer, fashion photographer, graphic designer and typographer, and considers their interactions.\u0000 Fourth, the article delves into the interpersonal relations of studio members with fashion journalists and editors, as well as structural interactions between fashion producers and fashion media. Especially, it questions the role of French Elle in the visual and discursive construction\u0000 of Prisunic’s commodities as the product of creative labour. The article draws on sociologist Michel Callon’s focus on ‘agencies’ and ‘material devices’, which are instrumental in shaping markets and the cultural economy. Further, it builds on sociologist\u0000 Liz McFall’s characterization of material devices as shaped by the interaction of institutional, organizational and technological arrangements to analyse the studio’s labour practices within Prisunic, upstream with its suppliers and downstream with the press. This article traces\u0000 the processes, interactions and arrangements that make up Prisunic’s styling streams.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43825929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While the figure of the fashion photographer has been widely discussed, little has been written on image-making as a collective endeavour. Fashion photography indeed results from technical innovations, publishing strategies, editorial policies, behind-the-scenes negotiations and, ultimately, decision-making. This article analyses ‘The Condé Nast Papers’ ‐ a series of internal documents held at the Condé Nast archives in New York ‐ together with US Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s editorials and covers to explore how fashion photographs resulted from the collective labour of photographers, editors, artistic directors and many others in the early 1940s. Through these unique historical sources, this article gives a voice to the workers involved in the making of fashion images and shows how decision-making and creativity were distributed across occupations. It also unpacks the negotiations, arbitrations and power relations that underpinned work relations at US Vogue, showing the collaboration, competition and conflict between the different actors. Drawing on art sociologist Howard Becker’s concept of ‘art worlds’ while combining methods from fashion history and visual and material culture, I question the respective status of the multiple authors involved in this activity and the conventions of fashion image-making. In doing so, I argue that fashion photographs are the product of the interactions of a multitude of workers who are embedded in the power structures of the fashion media industry, and whose collective labour is made invisible. My goal is to rethink the ways in which collective labour has been evidenced and produced in the fashion industry.
{"title":"Collaboration, competition and conflict: The collective labour of fashion photography at US Vogue (1940‐42)","authors":"Marlène Van de Casteele","doi":"10.1386/infs_00050_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00050_1","url":null,"abstract":"While the figure of the fashion photographer has been widely discussed, little has been written on image-making as a collective endeavour. Fashion photography indeed results from technical innovations, publishing strategies, editorial policies, behind-the-scenes negotiations and, ultimately,\u0000 decision-making. This article analyses ‘The Condé Nast Papers’ ‐ a series of internal documents held at the Condé Nast archives in New York ‐ together with US Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s editorials and covers to explore how\u0000 fashion photographs resulted from the collective labour of photographers, editors, artistic directors and many others in the early 1940s. Through these unique historical sources, this article gives a voice to the workers involved in the making of fashion images and shows how decision-making\u0000 and creativity were distributed across occupations. It also unpacks the negotiations, arbitrations and power relations that underpinned work relations at US Vogue, showing the collaboration, competition and conflict between the different actors. Drawing on art sociologist Howard Becker’s\u0000 concept of ‘art worlds’ while combining methods from fashion history and visual and material culture, I question the respective status of the multiple authors involved in this activity and the conventions of fashion image-making. In doing so, I argue that fashion photographs are\u0000 the product of the interactions of a multitude of workers who are embedded in the power structures of the fashion media industry, and whose collective labour is made invisible. My goal is to rethink the ways in which collective labour has been evidenced and produced in the fashion industry.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48961254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The labour of fashion heritage in Singapore","authors":"W. Yap","doi":"10.1386/infs_00056_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00056_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44624450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article interrogates the reputation, prevalent to this day, of Balenciaga as being anti-advertising and anti-media, according to some of his contemporary journalists as well as some of his employees and clients. The study contextualizes Balenciaga in the framework of the influence of the fashion press and the reality of the French couture licensing business in the North American fashion market from 1937 to 1968, his years on the international scene. Based on the analysis of the issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Women’s Wear Daily for the same period, the research demonstrates that the designer had not always been so scornful of the media. He really was a discreet man, but this does not mean he hated the press, as his designs often appeared in the most influential fashion magazines. The article argues that the negative view in the media’s perception of him was generalized after his veto to the press in January 1956 – a decision he took for business reasons – and was retroactively attributed to his entire professional life.
{"title":"Balenciaga: Addressing misconceptions concerning his fashion press policies","authors":"A. Balda","doi":"10.1386/infs_00046_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/infs_00046_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article interrogates the reputation, prevalent to this day, of Balenciaga as being anti-advertising and anti-media, according to some of his contemporary journalists as well as some of his employees and clients. The study contextualizes Balenciaga in the framework of the influence of the fashion press and the reality of the French couture licensing business in the North American fashion market from 1937 to 1968, his years on the international scene. Based on the analysis of the issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Women’s Wear Daily for the same period, the research demonstrates that the designer had not always been so scornful of the media. He really was a discreet man, but this does not mean he hated the press, as his designs often appeared in the most influential fashion magazines. The article argues that the negative view in the media’s perception of him was generalized after his veto to the press in January 1956 – a decision he took for business reasons – and was retroactively attributed to his entire professional life.","PeriodicalId":42103,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Fashion Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49149744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}