fashion and globalization (3)

8/19/2019 Fashion and Globalization (3)

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FASHION AND

GLOBALIZATION


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Iria Pérez Gestal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ..................................................................................

.................... 3

Theories ........................................................................................................... 3

Methodology .................................................................................................... 5

Transmission of trends ....................................................................................... 6

Production anddistribution ............................................................................... 8

Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 11

List ofreferences ................................................................................................ 13

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INTRODUCTION

Very few would dispute the fact that we live in a global world, where local

economy, politics and culture do not longer belong to and inuence their

immediate surroundings alone, but a large extent of the rest of the globe.

This context of merging borders has entailed drastic changes in the way

goods and services are produced and distributed and in how information and

ideas are transmitted. Fashion, both a business and a cultural good, has notbeen impervious to that: on the one hand, fashion is a multi-billion dollar

industry that has to survive in a more and more competitive global maret

and produce for a trans-continental audience! and, on the other hand, it is

also an immaterial good and the way it is transmitted, shared and created

changes along with society. "oth fashion and globali#ation are complex and

multidimensional phenomena, and the analysis of their connection can be

approached by a wide variety of disciplines. Throughout this essay $ will

analyse what and how has changed in fashion with globali#ation, focusing

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on the inuence economical1 and cultural2 globali#ation have had in the

transmission of trends and the structure and behaviour of the industry.

Firstly, fashion is one of the few cultural goods that we carry with us every

day and have a role in our daily life, so the way trends are created and

transmitted is a%ected both by changes in the di%usion of culture &as it

happened with cultural globali#ation- and by changes in society. 'econdly,

fashion industry has, as every other, been a%ected by economic

globali#ation. (owever, unlie any other industry, fashion produces

ephemeral cultural goods, and so the production of clothes has also been

a%ected by the new model of transmission of trends with cultural

globali#ation.

THEORIES

For the analysis of transmission of trends $ too as a frame of reference two

ma)or wors on fashion sociology: The Theory of the *eisure +lass, by

Thorstein Veblen and The mpire of Fashion, by illes *ipovetsy. The

Theory of the *eisure +lass, written in /00, de1ned the transmission of

trends according to a vertical model, that is, innovations in fashion are

created for the high society, who is then imitated by the lower classes.

+lothes, he argued, were the most visible way in which the leisure class,

that is, the part of society that is wealthy enough to avoid manual labouring,

could aunt their wealth: 23o apparel can be considered elegant, or even

decent, if it shows the e%ect of manual labour on the part of the wearer, in

the way of soil or wear.43 5ccording to this theory, trends are transmitted

one at a time, and following the social hierarchy, from top to bottom. 5lmost

one century later, in 0/6, *ipovetsy4 7uestioned this model: according to

him, in the more open society of the twentieth century, people did not

longer imitate the upper class but their fellow man, that is, the di%usion of

fashion had changed from a vertical model to an hori#ontal one. 5fter the

1 2conomic globali#ation referes to the increasing interdependce of worldeconomies as a result of the growing scale of cross-border trade of commodities andservices, ow of international capital and wide and rapid spread of thechnologies.4'hang7uan 89;: 2 2+ultural globali#ation refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values

accross national borders4 $nda < =osaldo 899;: >3 Veblen 89/;: 6?4 *ipovetsy 800;

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=eady to @ear revolution, the way people dress does not correspond so

obviously as before to their social status, because there is no longer one

aesthetic valid but many. 2There is no longer one fashion, but a multiplicity

of fashions e7ually legitimate45. $n the 9st century, 5na AartBne# "arreiro

discusses more recent model, arguing that 2with the e%ect of taylorism,

mass media and social mobility, innovations do no longer tae elites as

reference but the middle class, who are now the main characters of

contemporary economic life46. @iswede went one step further and proposed

the model of virulence7, a freer and incontrollable transmission of culture

that, lie virus, propagate across borders and classes.

'econdly, in order to analyse how economic globali#ation has inuence the

production of clothes, $ too the de1nition AartBne# "arreiro made of the

new economic scenario: 2economy is now global and informational. $t is

informational because a businessC productivity and competitiveness relies

on its capacity to generate, process and apply information eDciently. 5nd it

is global because the production, consumption and as well as their

components 8capital, labour, raw materials, management, information

technology, marets; are organi#ed globally.4

8

(owever, for 5mericaneconomist +harles Eman, 2globali#ation is more usefully understood as a

microeconomic phenomenon &one that is driven by the strategies and

behaviour of T3+s49. 5ccording to iore and 'abel, the production

organisation changed in the seventies, when the economic crisis led to a

2second industrial divide410 and the old mass production model on assembly

lines was replaced by exible production. Eman compared both systems as

follows 2the common denominator of exible organisations, relative to

fordist organisations, is that they signi1cantly reduce waste and therefore

enhance productivity by reversing the logic of taylorism, i.e. by integrating

thining and doing at all levels of operation within an organisation.4 5t the

5 *ipovetsy 800;: 0, as 7uoted by AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: G96 AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: G7 @iswedeCs wor was written in erman, and AartBne# "arreiro 89G; translatedthis term to 'panish. The term $ use here is my translation to nglish of the latter.8 AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: GG9

Eman 800G; as 7uoted in Aartinussen 8006;: 910 iore < 'abel 80/G;11 Eman 800G;: /H

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same time, the internationalisation of the capital that began with

globali#ation was also starting to be done in new ways. The change

manifested itself in the transfer of industrial production from the

industrialised countries, resulting in a gradual emergence of a new

international division of labour12. Ielocali#ation has been analysed by

numerous academics from di%erent perspectives: neo-classical economists

have generally come to the conclusion that delocali#ation have had

favourable net e%ects on the economies of the developing countries, while

Aarxist researches have stressed he negative impact of T3+s upon the

economic and social development of peripheral societies13

METHODOLOGY

$n order to analyse how fashion has changed with globali#ation, $ will 1rstly

analyse how creation and transmission of trends have changed in this new

scenario: who are the trend setters now and what is the path aesthetics

follow to become global. To that end, $ will discuss the di%erent models

sociologists have proposed in the last century, and try to raise some light to

the relationship between how society has changed in the last 1fty years andthe changes fashion has underwent in that same period of time. Taing the

wor of AartBne# "arreiro14 and $chiwaa15 as a starting point, $ will then

focus on the industrial facet of fashion, speci1cally in the production and

distribution of clothes. Firstly, $ will analyse the inuence that the changes in

the transmission of trends had in the industry, how the structure of the

business has changed and which new business models have appeared with

globali#ation. 'econdly, $ will tal, from a microeconomic perspective, about

how clothes are produced and distribution in a global economy, giving

special attention to the )ust-in-time distribution system ma)or low-cost

fashion company Jara implemented with great success at the beginning of

the century and the increasing delocali#ation of production in the fashion

business. Throughout the essay, $ will illustrate the theories with examples

of the industry, and compare luxury brands to mass retailers in order to give

12 Aartinussen 8006;: G13

Aartinussen 8006;: 9>, 9G14 AartBne# "arreiro 89G;15 $chiwaa 89/;

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a view as global as possible on how globali#ation has a%ected this empire of

the ephemeral.

Finally, $ will loo at the relationship between globali#ation and fashion in the

opposite direction, concluding my wor with a brief reection on what is the

role fashion plays in a changing world, and which challenges will it have to

face in the years to come.

TRANSMISSION OF TRENDS

$n the pre-globali#ation world, trends were transmitted vertically and from

up to down, that is, fashion houses designed for the upper class, and those

where later imitated by the lower classes. This 2pecuniary emulation4, as

Veblen put it16, is a conse7uence of the increasing value ownership started

to have with the industrial revolution. roperty, said Veblen, became 2the

most easily recogni#ed evidence of a reputable degree of success. $t

therefore becomes the conventional basis of esteem4 17. eople were valued

for what they have, and thus they imitated upper classes in order to be

identi1ed with them. +onse7uently, upper classes had to innovate again to

distinguish themselves from the lower. 25s fast as a person maes new

ac7uisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to a%ord appreciably greater

satisfaction than the earlier standard did.418. $n the 9th century, this

dynamic started to change. +lasses began to be more open and moving

from the lower class to the upper was still diDcult, but at least possible now,

and the role of women was beginning to change in the @estern world. The

most illustrative example of this change is the case of abrielle K+ocoC

+hanel, daughter of a salesman and a housewife, and born in an orphanage

in the north of France, and who ended up creating one of the biggest fashion

brands and changing the rules of fashion forever. 'he dressed high society

women with stripped tee shirts inspired by those worn by the sailors in

France, camellias usually worn by the servants in reat "ritain and pearls

that were, at that time, only popular in =ussia. (er designs were made for

the upper class, but inspired by the lower. "ut perhaps the big change was

16

Veblen 89/;17 Veblen 89/;: 9/, 9018 Veblen 89/;: >

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that she did that with ready to wear collections, and not (aute +outure as it

was the trend at that time. 19 (owever, new trends were still transmitted one

at a time, in the only two collections the designers made a year. Aoreover,

although +hanel was inspired by the lower-class for her creations, that does

not invalidate VeblenCs model, because trends did not exactly ow from

down to up: what was in fashion was still set up by what the upper classes

wore, even though particular garments were inspired in the lower classes

attire.

The up to down system was valid until mid 9th century. The end of 3a#ism

and other dictatorships supposed a change in western society &maing it

more open and democratic- that inevitably a%ected the way fashion is

transmitted. $n this new context, said AartBne# "arreiro 2the di%usion of taste and fashions is done indirectly, given that power has lost the capacity

to be spectacular and recognisable, being now more abstract and

anonymous without losing its structural position4 20. $f the power is no longer

so visually identi1able and, than to economical development, lower classes

can improve their life 7uality without the upper losing their privileges,

clothes cannot sustain their position as 2basis of esteem4 as strongly as

before. The world was more democratic and so was fashion: in the 1fties,

2the ready to wear revolution began to allow everyone to wear fashionable

yet inexpensive clothes421, replacing (aute +outure as the trendsetter. $n

addition, many scholars have pointed out individualism as another cause for

the change in transmission of clothes. *ipovetsy calls this 2the second

individualist revolution422, where the private life becomes more important

than the public one, and the permissive and hedonist values have replaced

the old moral based on obedience. Fashion is now not only lined to the

pleasure of being seen and appreciated by others, but also to an ownhedonistic pleasure: each individual can choose what fashion he or she

wants to imitate, and do it for their own pleasure and as a reaDrmation of

their freedom23. Aoreover, images, items and people can now travel

worldwide faster than ever, and the new information and communication

19 Aadsen 890;20 AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: G> 8translated by me;21

$chiwaa 89/;: 9?G22 *ipovetsy 800;: 023 AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: G9

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technologies mae trends able to cross borders almost instantaneously. @ith

tools for a faster and cross-border transmission of ideas, and now that

distinction between classes has blurried, the sources of inspiration can come

from everywhere: 1rstly, the border between prLt-M-porter and street wear

has disappeared, and now the lower-classes attire can be the inuence for

designers! and secondly, in a more democratic society, imitation can now

also occur among e7uals, which explains the increasing, across-classes

popularity of street style blogs. Thus, trends ow from top to bottom, from

bottom to top and among the middle class, and they do it so constantly they

overlap each other. This is what @iswede, as 7uoted by AartBne# "arreiro24,

called 2virulence4: fashion spreads lie a virus, and the source of a new

trend is usually untraceable. The cultural unity, be it an idea, behaviour,fashion or style, that spreads uncontrollably is named 2meme4, and was 1rst

introduced by biologist =ichard Iawins in The Selsh Gene. Aemes

replicate themselves )umping from individual to individual by endless

imitation, and, lie genes in the Iarwinian evolution theory, they compete

with each other25. This new form of transmission of trends ends with the old

2season trend4, settled by fashion houses twice a year, and allows many

di%erent trends to exist at the same time having all the same value.

(owever, this model has also been critici#ed by other academics lie

'7uicciarino26, who argued that, behind the appearance of a more e7ual

society, the classic pyramidal model still exists, and popular masses are

being told what to do 8or what to wear; by a constant bombarding of

advertising and media stories that act lie a 1lter of trends for the middle

class. 3evertheless, although the inuence of media and advertising is

undeniable, it cannot be ignored that popular culture has a stronger

inuence than ever on ma)or fashion houses and among the elites. runge,for example, inspired (eidi 'limane for his 1rst collection as creative

director at 'aint *aurent96, and this yearCs +ostume $nstitute gala, hosted by

Vogue maga#ine and that taes place at the Aetropolitan Auseum of 5rt in

3ew Nor, was dedicated to pun9/.

5ll in all, although there is no general agreement on which the new model of

24 @iswede 806;, in AartBne# "arreiro 89G;: G25 =ichard Iawings 89;26

'7uicciarino 800;: HH27 The uardian 8GO>O>;28 @omanCs @ear Iaily P@@IQ 8HO?O>;

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transmission is, it is undeniable that the old vertical model is no longer

valid. 5 more e7ual and individualistic society has ended with the old direct

imposition of trends that now ow across classes, and globali#ation has

made possible the fast transmission of new fashions across borders too!

thus, with a wider range of trends to choose from, it is now almost

impossible to be completely demodé.

PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION

$n the context of a global world and with the transmission of trends being

trans-borders as well, the old model of a local brand, driven by its creator

and that produces for a local audience is no longer valid. "rands have to

produce for a global audience and sometimes the ey to their survival is to

be present in marets thousands of miles away. For designer brands born

one or two centuries ago and that were created to sell to a much smaller

audience, to change their communication and distribution dynamics in order

to reach millions of customers re7uires a great investment that many of

them cannot a%ord. For that reason, many of them gathered in powerful

conglomerates that provide them 1nancial support. 5lmost all ma)or

designer brands are own by one of this three groups: *VA( 8French;, Rering,called before = 8French; and =ichemont roup 8'wiss;. Thus, although

they sell to a global audience and foreign creators design their products, the

owners of the most important luxury fashion houses are still uropeans. $n

addition, this concentration supposes a bigger control over creators,

because the interests of a bigger business are at stae. "alenciaga, for

example, was created by 'panish +ristSbal "alenciaga, who designed and

owned the brand until he died in 069. 3ow, "alenciagaCs creative director

is now 5lexander @ang, an 5merican born to Vietnamese parents, and it isown by French group Rering. @ang has also another brand with his own

name, own by Rering as well. 5lmost all brands established one century ago

and that are still on active duty today have followed the same path, except

for +hanel and (erms, whose owners are family-related to the company.

5s we have seen, the production of fashion goods is strongly inuenced by

the way trends are transmitted. @ith the latter being more frenetic than

ever, the product life cycle is shorter, and therefore the obsolescence of lastseasonCs products, much bigger. This new scenario has made possible the

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success of recent mass retailers brands lie Jara and (31 Eman 800G;: /H

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articles are restoced, and new clothes are sent according to the

preferences of the customers. This supposes an important saving in storage

and maintenance 8both of raw materials and of products in process and

1nished;32 and maes 1nancially possible for them to be up to date in

fashion trends, and selling them at low prices. $n addition, globali#ation has

made possible for many fashion companies to relocate their production to

developing countries lie $ndia, where the cost of labour is lower, with the

aim of reducing costs and being more competitive in global economy.

5lthough neo-liberalists economists have pointed out that this may have a

positive inuence in the development in these countries, facts indicate

otherwise. +ompanies delocali#e according to four criteria: a comparatively

cheap, disciplined and unorganised worforce, a legal framewor that isfavourable for foreign investors, the opportunity costs 8what other countries

o%er; and that the infrastructures are good enough for the running of the

company33. @hen companies move their production to countries where

labour laws are weaer, or unions are banned, they tae advantage of this

situation and contribute to it, impeding the developing of this places that

eep giving them advantages to avoid loosing the money input that their

presence there supposes. This process could be inverted if companies

changed their criteria, and delocali#e to countries where worerCs rights are

taen into account, and so countries that do not do so would have to change

if they want these companies not to leave their country. Finally, although

delocali#ation is ey for mass retailers because it allows them to eep low

prices, some high-priced brands lie 5rmani also produce in developing

countries34. Wsually, the label still reads 2made in $taly4 because the

products are 1nished in urope35. Iesigner brands are, as $chiwaa pointed

out 2deeply related to peopleCs identities both at the individual and nationallevels.4 +hanel sells arisian chic, =alph *auren sells the 5merican way of

life, and 5rmani sells $talian lifestyle. This intangible part of the clothes is

what maes these brands aspirational and more expensive. $f they

delocali#e without reducing their prices nor improving the 7uality of their

clothes, they ris losing their identity, so fragile and hard to achieve. En the

32 +astellano 800>;: G>33

Aartinussen 8006;: 034 ""+ 89O9O;35 * 5X' 896O9O0;

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other hand, luxury brands lie (erms and +hanel eep producing their

most iconic products in France and in an artisanal way. $t is also more

expensive, but it gives the brand an added value that allows them to

compensate the expense with higher prices.

CONCLUSION

Fashion is, consciously or not, present every day in our lives. @ith the ready-

to-wear revolution in the 1fties, fashion contributed to mae society more

egalitarian, and at least the attire was not a barrier between classes any

more. Fashion opened to the world, and thans to cultural globali#ation,

anyone can now become a reference of trends and inuence and inspire the

creations of the designers. "ut to adapt to this constant ow of trends, andthe 1erce competitiveness of participating in a global maret, the industry

has relocated their production to developing countries, where worers

produce in terrible conditions. This is a big step bac on the path that began

sixty years ago, and as long the industry eeps taing advantage of

ine7ualities between citi#ens of the world, the democrati#ation of fashion

will not be complete.

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'aint *aurent collection. The Guardian. =etrieved from

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+astellano, . A. 800>; Wna venta)a competitiva: el factor tiempo. l caso

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Iawins, =. 89;, El gen egoísta: las bases biológicas de nuestra

conducta, "arcelona: 'alvat +iencia.

(opper, . 896;. nderstanding cultural globali!ation. Aanchester: olity

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$chiawa, '. 89/;. +reative industries: The case of fashion. $n (. 5nheier, <

N. =a) $sar 8ds.;, The "ultures and Globali!ation Series #: The cultural

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Rarim#adeh, A., *ynch, A., (arris, T. 89>, Aarch H;. 5narchy at the Aet:

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'hang7uan, . 89;. Economic globali!ation: Trends, ris1s and ris1

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