Fashion Knowledge in Mass Production

Although elite styles are important to the formation of generalised dress styling trends, the elite fashions that appear in the mass media are inaccessible to most consumers. When people buy new mass produced clothing, they choose necessarily from the limited range of styles available in nearby retail stores that are also within their income-based price threshold. In turn, the styles available in retail stores are those styles that garment firms decide to manufacture. Since consumer choices are confined to the styles that are on offer, it is important to understand where the styling contained in everyday massproduced clothing originates and how it relates to the fashion styles produced by elite designers. As Craik (1994:i) notes, the relationship between elite design and everyday fashion remains poorly understood. By viewing fashion’s styling as forming structured spaces that link the elite fashion system to mass production, this chapter provides an account of the articulation of fashion knowledges into the production system. It explains how the fashion styles legitimated in the elite sector are appropriated to become the commodified styles in the mass production sector. The chapter demonstrates that the styles produced by the global garment manufacturing industries derive from elite fashion styles. It also shows how the protection of proprietary knowledge patterns the transmission of fashion ideas as they flow into the mass production system. The chapter is structured as follows. The first section theorises flows of fashion knowledge in the production system in terms of a combination of the fluidity or viscosity of the ideas that fashion expresses and the legal protections afforded to design originality. Section Two considers how the styles that will become mass fashions are identified. It establishes the logic behind the collective movement of fashion style trends. Section Three then traces the historical evolution of elite firms’ engagement with mass marketing, showing how that relationship has developed with changing