Producing Fashion

Commerce, Culture, and Consumers

By: Regina Lee Blaszczyk

Narrated by: Beth Richmond

Each essay in Producing Fashion is presented in full and has been selected from the original print edition. The essays show how economic institutions in Europe and North America laid the foundation for the global fashion system and sustained it commercially through the mechanisms of advertising, licensing, marketing, publishing, and retailing. The titles of the essays are: 1) "Rethinking Fashion"; 2) "Accessorizing, Italian Style"; 3) "Licensing Practices at Maison Christian Dior"; 4) "American Fashions for American Women"; 5) "California Casual"; 6) "Marlboro Men"; 7) "The Body and the Brand"; 8) "French Hairstyles and the Elusive Consumer"; 9) "Why the Old-Fashioned is in Fashion in American Houses".

This collection reveals how public and private institutions worked to shape fashion, style, and taste with varying degrees of success. Nine expert contributors draw on original research and fresh insight into the producers of fashion - advertising agents, architects, corporate executives, department stores, designers, editors, government officials, hairdressers, haute couturiers, and Web retailers - in thier bid for influence, acclaim, and shoppers' dollars. The book is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

©2008 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"At last, a collection of essays that considers fashion as both a commercial and a cultural phenomenon. Informed by recent approaches in the fields of business history, material culture studies, and the history of design, Producing Fashion offers a stimulating series of case studies... Anyone who has ever considered how and why fashionable trends emerge will find something of interest in its pages." (Christopher Breward, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Good book

I really enjoyed this book. My favorite chapter was about the Marlboro Man. I liked the chapter on Dior also. The woman on the book narrated well.