Fashion’s World Cities (2006)

By: Christopher Breward & David Gilbert, eds.

New York, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo. This familiar list of cities conjures up the image of high fashion. This book examines the powerful relationship between metropolitan modernity and fashion culture. The authors look at the significance of certain key sites in fashion’s world order and at transformations in the connections between key cities. The status of fashion capital has now become a goal for urban boosters and planners, part of the wider promotion of the ‘cultural economy’ of major cities. In a rapidly changing global fashion system, new centres like Shanghai are making claims to join the ranks of Fashion’s World Cities. In chapters ranging from Los Angeles to Moscow and Dakar to Mumbai, Fashion’s World Cities explores the relationship between major metropolises and the production, consumption and mythologizing of fashion.

More Information

Description

Oxford: Berg, 2006
ISBN: 1845204131 9781845204136
OCLC Number: 475339911
Description: 285 s. : illustrations

Table of contents

Table of contents

Part One: Fashion’s World Cities: urban modernity and urban orders

  • From Paris to Shanghai: the changing geographies of fashion’s world cities
    David Gilbert, Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Urbane Fashion: Fashionability and the city
    Elizabeth Wilson, University of the Arts, London

Part Two: Fashion’s World Cities: styles and representations

  • Paris, Capitale de la Mode: Representing the fashion city in the media
    Agnes Rocamora, London College of Fashion
  • Placing Tokyo on the Fashion Map: From catwalk to streetstyle
    Yuniya Kawamura, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York
  • Curating the Fashion City: New York style at the VA
    Sonnet Stanfill, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
  • Creating the Fashion City on Film 1953-1961
    Pamela Church Gibson, London College of Fashion

Part Three: Fashion’s World Cities: refabricating the urban order

  • Milan, the city of pret porter: From Italian style to ‘Made in Milan’
    Simona Segre Reinach, Fashion Studies, IULM University, Milan
  • How New York Stole Modern Fashion
    Norma Rantisi, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
  • Mapping Moscow Fashion: Spaces and spectacles of consumption
    Olga Vainshtein, Russian State University for the Humanities
  • Shaping the Shopping City: Master plans and pipe dreams in London’s West End 1945-1979
    Bronwen Edwards Royal Holloway, University of London

Part Four: Fashion’s World Cities: Transnational Networks

  • La Mode Dakaroise: Elegance, transnationalism and an African fashion capital
    Hudita Nura Mustafa, Sarah Lawrence College (NY)
  • Far Out and Way In: London as fashion cosmopolis, 1945-1979
    Sonia Ashmore, London College of Fashion
  • Fabrications of India: Transnational networks and the making of ‘East/West’ fashion
    Claire Dwyer, University College London
  • Sewing Machines and Dream Machines: Los Angeles and San Francisco as global fashion cities
    Susan Kaiser & Leslie W. Rabine, University of California, Davis

About the author

About the author

Christopher Breward is Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland, UK and Professorial Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the author of Fashioning London (Bloomsbury, 2004) and co-editor of The Englishness of English Dress (Bloomsbury, 2002) and Fashion’s World Cities (Bloomsbury, 2006).

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Eicher, Joanne. “Book review: Fashion’s world cities. By Christopher Breward and David Gilbert.” Cultural Geographies, 16:3 (2009), 415–415. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474009105057

Student reviews