Encounters in the Global Fashion Business

This issue of Current Sociology explores the relationship between fashion as a cultural form and fashion as business through five articles by scholars who have done extensive research on the fashion business.The question that underlies the articles concerns the connection between production and consumption of fashion.What is the relationship between them?How can they be studied without marginalizing one or the other?The articles capture in rich detail the way in which fashion is actually produced these days, and their answers are supported by empirical evidence.They offer a clear description of processes within the seemingly tumultuous fashion industry.The global fashion business is a large and diverse sector that comprises traditional manufacturing industry as well as creative sectors typical of the New Economy.The fashion business has long been a leader in industrial outsourcing, and new global peripheries of labour-intensive manufacturing change almost as rapidly as fashion itself.The same can be said about the volatile relationship between technologies, materials, manufacturing, design, branding, marketing and consumption. 1One implication of the fact that the fashion business is both a creative sector and an old-fashioned manufacturing industry is that professionals are required to make both ends of the value chain, i.e. production and consumption, hang together.This is the task of the middle managers, who know how to set up a factory in a developing country, of the buyers, who make decisions about the coming season's collection, as well as designers working for manufacturers who use their knowledge of fashion to mediate between overseas buyers' requirements and the abilities of the local factories and workforce.