We need approaches that both acknowledge the diversity of relation-
ships between fashion and cities, and that recognize the different paths
that different cities take. We need approaches that break the grip of
what we might describe as a particular urban fashion formation on the
ways that we analyses the fashion city. An extreme example of this kind
of thinking can be found in the economic geographer Allen Scott’s
(2002) paper on strategies to shift Los Angeles into the front-rank of
fashion’s world center, which runs through a composite checklist of dif-
ferent dimensions of the fashion city. We have argued elsewhere that
even in 2002 this proposal was as much an attempt at time-travel as
restructuring, seeking to make LA more like what New York, Paris and
London were fast ceasing to be (Gilbert 2013).
While Scott’s suggestions did at least consider a wide range of aspects
of the nature of fashion, including design, manufacturing networks,
media, events and place-specific symbolic qualities of the city, other
approaches to the fashion city over-emphasize one particular aspect of
the fashion system. This is particularly evident in approaches that treat
fashion design as an example of a creative industry (CIs), and the cen-
tral activity of fashion cities (Hu and Chen 2014). There are many
examples of local CIs-oriented policies that have invested in fashion
design industries for the promotion of urban growth, creativity and cul-
tural distinctiveness (Wenting 2008). These strategies have mainly
focused on the development of “fashion districts,” where a variety of
actors and institutions like specialist manufacturers, educational institu-
tions and suppliers are concentrated, on the adoption of “slow fashion
models” focusing on small-scale production, artisanal techniques and
local resources, as well as the use of brand channels for enhancing the value of local fashion design industries (Leslie, Brail, and Hunt 2014;
Rantisi and Leslie 2015; Aakko 2019). For example, local governments
in Johannesburg (Rogerson 2006), Auckland (Larner, Molloy, and
Goodrum 2007), Toronto (Leslie and Brail 2011), Copenhagen and
Stockholm (Melchior 2011) have allocated significant resources to the
development of fashion design clusters with the aim of promoting their
creative economy and fostering economic growth.
In such formulations other aspects of fashion become secondary.
There is a danger here, that an older form of writing about fashion cit-
ies, that highlighted the genius of individual designers and their relation-
ship with the genius loci of a city (Santagata 2004; Tokatli 2011), is
translated into the language of networks, clusters and urban milieu
(Boontharm 2015). Manufacturing, retailing, education, consumption
and other aspects of fashion are reduced to factors that support the suc-
cess of the design industry, while synergies and co-location with other
creative industries become keys to success.
What if we didn’t seek a single type of fashion city, whether match-
ing the characteristics of the great historic centers or as creative design
clusters, but instead thought more about different ways that fashion and
urbanism intersect? One way of exploring this is highlighted by the
work on “second-tier” or “not-so-global” fashion cities (see, e.g.,
Rantisi 2011; Skov 2011; Larner, Molloy, and Goodrum 2007). Such
work moves away from measuring Antwerp, Toronto, Auckland and
other cities against the models set by established global centers to think
about the distinctive kinds of fashion formation possible in smaller cities
in particular economic and cultural contexts. The promotion of such cit-
ies often emphasizes their distinctiveness from the characteristics of the
great fashion centers. Some forms of elite fashion consumption and
tourism, notably in the worldview of publications such as Monocle
actively encourage a hunt for the undiscovered fashion city, searching
for a combination of design and geographical novelty off-the-beaten
track. (See for example Monocle’s promotion of the fashion scenes in
Beirut, Cartagena, Honolulu and other unexpected cities. See mon-
ocle.com)
In recent work, we have suggested an alternative, that it may be best
to think of fashion cities in terms not of a fixed list of attributes, but as
a field of different possible urban fashion formations (Casadei 2018;
Casadei and Gilbert 2018). Our suggestion uses Weberian ideal types as
a heuristic device. Ideal types are mental constructs that, as Weber sug-
gested, are created through a one-sided analytical “accentuation of one
or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, dis-
crete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual
phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly empha-
sized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct” (Weber 1949, 90).
For Weber the utility of this “one-sided accentuation” came from judge-
ments about how closely real-world examples approach these constructions. We used this method to constructed ideal types of the
“manufacturing fashion city,” “the design fashion city” and “the sym-
bolic fashion city”; these are not types where solely manufacturing,
design or symbolic production of fashion take place, but are types where
those aspects of the fashion system dominate (and it might be suggested
for example that the kind of fashion city aimed for in the CCI literature
approaches our ideal type of “the design fashion city”).
Recognizing the complexity of fashion and its relationship with
urbanism, this analysis does not just put cities into these different
groups and think about how closely they fit these ideal types. Instead
we use the types as the corners of a triangular conceptual diagram,
defining a field of fashion city types. As a heuristic device we can then
discuss how we appropriately position urban fashion formations in this
field. Thus the “classic” modern fashion capitals of Paris and New York
with their complex, multi-faceted fashion economies and cultures occupy
positions close to the center of the diagram. Other urban fashion forma-
tions are positioned more toward one corner of the diagram. It can for
example be argued that London, which has seen the biggest decline in
manufacturing of fashion’s major centers (Evans and Smith 2006),
which has a significant but relatively small fashion design sector (cer-
tainly as compared with Paris, New York or Milan), but which has
important fashion media, events, place-specific fashion cultures and his-
tories, and strong fashion-related cultural and educational institutions,
sits much closer to the symbolic fashion city corner. The diagram can
also help us to think through and visualize changes in urban fashion for-
mations over time, and we include suggestive pathways for the major
fashion centers. For most established fashion centers, the offshoring of
manufacturing and the development of fast fashion production systems
has not only reduced the volume of garments produced but has also
weakened the significance of local flexible production and led to the
loss of local craft skills. Such changes shift the nature of fashion city
(and on the diagram are associated with moves downwards away from
the top corner).
Other cities are positioned as representations of their twenty-first
century formations. So, for example, Johannesburg and Toronto are
positioned in the bottom left corner of the diagram due to the signifi-
cant resources these cities have allocated to the growth and consolida-
tion of fashion design clusters as part of CIs-oriented policies (Rogerson
2006; Leslie, Brail, and Hunt 2014). Antwerp and Barcelona are posi-
tioned in the bottom right corner because of their emphasis on city
branding processes that have prioritized events, fashion tourism, shop-
ping activities, and museums initiatives rather than production or design
(Martınez 2007; Chilese and Russo 2008). Those cities positioned near
the top of the diagram (e.g., Mumbai, Shanghai) have a reputation for
being manufacturing hubs, where firms from cities in advanced countries
have offshore production processes. Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam occupy positions close to the bottom center of the diagram because of
their further investments in events (particularly fashion weeks) that sig-
nificantly contribute to the promotion of local fashion design sectors
(Melchior 2011; McRobbie 2013). Similarly, Los Angeles and Florence
are closer to the top center of the diagram due to the growing signifi-
cance of events (e.g., Pitti Uomo, LA Fashion Week) aimed at showcas-
ing local production and enhancing the reputation of these cities for
manufacturing (Williams and Currid-Halkett 2011; Casadei 2018).
The diagram provokes questions about new fashion cities, particu-
larly those closely associated with growing manufacturing sectors. What
we are not claiming is that there is a kind of unilinear “modernization”
of the relationship between fashion and cities, marking a progression
from manufacturing through design and on toward symbolic fashion cit-
ies. However, the position near the manufacturing corner of both his-
toric centers and emergent fashion centers invites a number of
questions. It asks us to think about the relationships between manufac-
turing and other elements of the fashion system in different periods. It
also invites us to think comparatively about the historical and potential
future pathways of fashion cities, particularly in a context where urban
geographies of design and symbolic production are strongly embedded
elsewhere (Figure 1).
Los Angeles os Angeles
Mumbai
Shanghai
Florence
Milan
New York
1850s
1920s
1970s
1900s
Paris
Johannesburg
Toronto Berlin
Copenhagen
Amsterdam
Barcelona
Antwerp
London
DESIGN FASHION CITY
SYMBOLIC FASHION CITY
MANUFACTURING FASHION CITY
beautiful