The Fashion Businesschanges in dress and fashion do not happen of their own accord. Human agency,
in the form of fashion designers, a vast apparel industry, and a critically responsible
consuming public, is necessary in order to bring them to pass. Obvious as this
may seem, it is often lost sight of by the many writers who view the succession of
fashion as somehow fated or ineluctably driven by the Zeitgeist’s flux.^47Fashion, Culture and Identity promises to consider the ‘labyrinthine passage
whereby an idea in the designer’s head is translated into the purchases and
pleasures of the consumer’.^48 Following the largest section of the book,
addressing the issues of identity, gender, status and sexuality, the final two
chapters deal with the fashion’s cycles and processes. The text does indeed
include quotes from and references to some knowledgeable designers and
journalists but despite some pithy observations, the picture created is rather
wooden. Davis was a sociologist interested in the fashion industry from a
sociological point of view, and his description rather recalls a Victorian
ornithologist’s study of the habits of a newly discovered species of bird. The
description might edify the general reader but it would be of little use to
young birds wishing to learn how to fly. The problem is not only that of the
author’s distance from his subjects, but also that of there being so few other
texts of its type that might support it. Many use references to designers
incidentally and sparsely to illustrate whatever point they are trying to make,
which of course depends on the author’s field of study.
Another criticism of those texts which attempt to portray the fashion
industry is that they have rarely succeeded in scratching the surface of the
glossy image presented by the industry itself. Very few have inquired further
than the ‘stars’, ‘the couturiers as display artists... the members of the
international personality circus’.^48 We read references to Armani, Valentino,
Calvin Klein, Versace, Vivienne Westwood and the like, as if they were the
sole creative agents within their respective organizations or within the fashion
industry. Those who are not ‘couturiers’, on the other hand, are often lumped
together as ‘high street designers’. It is not uncommon to read comments
regarding ‘high street designers’ such as ‘although they follow the couture
trend, their own collections are shaped by more pragmatic concerns’.^49 Such
descriptions, with their air of having been written before the 1960s, indicate
that the design explosion of the last three decades has passed unnoticed in
- Davis, F., Fashion, Culture and Identity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p.
- McDowell, C., The Designer Scam, London: Hutchinson, 1994, p. 39.
- Craik, J., The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, London: Routledge, 1994,
p. 60.