Documents fashion industry 11 results

"Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht Arbeitsverhaeltnisse der Kultur- und Kreativberufe. Es gibt einige empirische Anhaltspunkte, dass sich hier eine neue Stufe der Flexibilisierung von Arbeit vollzieht, die als Erwerbshybridisierung zu beschreiben ist. Die Frage ist, unter welchen beschaeftigungs- und arbeitspolitischen Bedingungen und in welchen empirischen Formen sie auftritt sowie welche Arbeitswirklichkeiten sich damit verbinden. Argumentiert wird, dass die Aufteilung von Erwerbsformen nach sozialversicherungspflichtig versus selbstaendig nur mehr zu kurz greift und dass sich in den Kulturberufen hybride Arbeitsverhaeltnisse entwickeln, die sich als Grenzgaenge zwischen Erwerbsformen und Arbeitsverhaeltnissen manifestieren. Exemplarisch diskutiert wird dieses Problem am Beispiel der Designbranche. Empirische Basis ist eine umfassende, qualitative Studie ueber kuenstlerisch-kreative Arbeit im arbeitsgesellschaftlichen Strukturwandel, die eine Feldstudie von zwei Feldern der Designbranche umfasst: Kommunikations- und Modedesign. Deutlich wird an diesem Beispiel, dass sich das Phaenomen der Erwerbshybridisierung korrespondierend mit der institutionellen Umwelt ausbildet, dass es daher zu strukturell differenzierten Grenzgaengen kommt und dass damit Herausforderungen fuer die Interessenpolitik im Kulturbereich verbunden sind."

"This article explores the aesthetic labor of embodying race. The author's research on fashion models in New York City uncovered a demand for aesthetic labor that differs along racial lines, namely, black models must fit themselves to a narrower set of standards, and experience their race as both an asset and a liability. This difference is evident in the context of the market for black models, where the “white gaze,” and the “corporate gaze” intersect. Yet both employers' desire for workers with a particular “look,” and workers' willingness to call on personal resources to style that “look” for the job foster a structural bias toward racist practices that are masked by appeals to “aesthetics.” Managing one's racial appearance reveals a unique quality of aesthetic labor that emerges only when race is taken into account, arguing for its inclusion among the characteristics workers manipulate when their work is studied as aesthetic labor."

"The US apparel industry employed over 1 million workers as late as 1980, but today it employs only about one-third of that number. The common explanation for this collapse is the delocalization of production to low wage countries, but this neglects advantages of speed, flexibility and proximity to centres of fashion and design that have helped some suppliers in high wage countries, such as Italy, to defend niche markets for fashionable products. This paper examines the question of why the US apparel industry has failed to tap these advantages. Based upon the analysis of both national data and original field research in the New York garment industry, it argues that the US industry has relied too long on an industry model based on ‘mass fashion' products, the scale and scope economies of large-scale suppliers and mass retailers, and innovations in information technologies as sources of competitiveness, while ignoring the importance of niche product innovation, small-scale supply chains and flexible retailing, and ‘collaboration economies' in design and production networks. Even in New York City, where small firms and fashion markets are important, the dominance of the large-scale mass-fashion model has inhibited contractors from developing highly productive and entrepreneurial supply networks that combine design with manufacturing and take full advantage of their potential for speed, flexibility and quality production."

"The term ‘aesthetic labour' has come to describe the recruitment, selection, development and deployment of physical and presentational attributes geared towards ‘looking good and sounding right' (Warhurst and Nickson, 2007: 104). Further research has identified a degree of stratification within interactive service work, with further distinctions developing around how particular aesthetic requirements reflect firms' brand strategies, market orientations and how they appeal to different consumer groupings – what we term, following Pettinger (2004, 2005), ‘aestheticised labour'. This article presents quantitative data and analyses the prevalence, character and use of aesthetic and aestheticised labour in the Australian fashion retail industry based on a study of fashion retail stores in the central business district of Sydney, Australia. Building on previous work, it identifies that what constitutes aesthetic labour varies according to the market segment and character of the store and brand. As such it reinforces the utility of ‘aestheticised labour' as a means of identifying nuances in the intensity and orientation of aesthetic labour within the retail sector."

"This article explores how company requirements to consume and perform the brand impact on the attachment fashion retail employees have to the brand. The research finds that over time some workers' attachment to the brand grew, whereas for others it diminished. To explain these differences, the article develops the idea of aesthetic labour as a ‘situated relational performance'. Attachment to the brand was mediated by both the ‘situated circuit of activity' in which the work was performed, incorporating the brand strategy, the clothes and the store layout. It was also mediated by the sense of distinction generated through a performance of a body for others."

"We investigate trade union strategies in fashion retail, a sector with endemic low wages, precarity and a representation gap. Unions in Milan organized ‘zero-hours contract' workers, while their counterparts in New York established an alternative channel of representation, the Retail Action Project. We argue, first, that the dynamics of both cases are counterintuitive, displaying institution-building in the USA and grassroots mobilization in Italy; second, union identity stands out as a key revitalizing factor, since only those unions with a broad working-class orientation could provide an effective representation for fashion retail workers."

" Workers producing garments in developing countries for European brands are often described as ‘slaves to fashion'. They are denied decent work, a core ILO objective and a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Instead, they are employed in unsafe factories prone to frequent deadly fires or building collapse, subject to anti-union discrimination and violence. The deprivation of their labour rights and poor working conditions might lead to the conclusion that they are in fact ‘modern slaves', and thus modern slavery is fuelling the garment supply chain which is, in turn, propelled forwards by the fast fashion demands of European consumers. Modern slavery within supply chains can be tackled by brands and retailers, typically those seen as responsible for such abuse and it can be tackled through trade and development policies by actors such as the European Union (EU). In Bangladesh, the EU is the country's largest trading partner in garments, and it has considerable leverage to improve labour rights, in doing so tackling modern slavery in the supply chain, utilising trade conditionality. The EU has to date lacked a policy focus on tackling modern slavery in its external relations, but with the adoption of the UN SDG 8 which combines elimination of modern slavery with decent work, there is scope for bringing about longstanding change. This paper argues for more normative interconnections between decent work and modern slavery in both national and EU external relations policies."

"This paper explores how persistent gender inequalities of the old world of work are amplified by the new world of work. Focusing on the fashion industry of Berlin, the article offers insight into a female-dominated field of labour as a particular field of labour of the cultural and creative industries (CCI). The CCI is regarded as a role model for new work. However, they entail deep gender inequalities in terms of segregation, low status and low pay. The paper addresses the question of how these gendered inequalities in the fashion industry are intertwined with its professional mechanisms and training structures. Based on a qualitative study, I argue that the fashion industry is a modernised semi-profession, which has been undergoing a market-driven professionalisation. However, this new pathway into the fashion industry fails to fully professionalise that industry. On contrary, it erects new occupational barriers into the field of labour that help establish high qualified and low qualified fashion work that also aids in polarising the still mostly female workforce in terms of status and rewards. Overall, it should become clear that the fashion industry is torn between the old and new world of work which helps to maintain or even reinforce traditional gender inequalities."