International change and technological evolution in the fashion industry

The aim of this research is to sketch out the parameters of the fashion industry. Whilst, without doubt fashion is a means of personal and cultural expression, it is also an industry. The industrial and economic aspects have been relatively under-researched. We highlight the fact that the fashion industry is fast evolving, and growing. Traditional economic analyses have under-examined some of the crucial drivers of change in this sector but these are all important issues for a number of reasons. First, the local and global consequences of the transformation of the fashion industry help us to understand the challenges facing urban and regional economies, particularly in Europe. Second, the fashion industry, like the cultural industries more generally, is leading a new form of economic development that blends qualitative elements and quantitative forms, a culturalisation of economic action. In so doing we also raise three questions, one has already been alluded to: what is the ‘fashion industry’; and following this, a second: is the fashion industry the same, or different, to other cultural industries? Finally, in relation to the dynamics of change, we point to the role of situatedness: the importance of place and institutional embedding