For any market to work properly, certain key elements are necessary: competition, pricing, rules, clearly defined offers, and easy access to information. Without these components, there would be chaos. Orderly Fashion examines how order is maintained in the different interconnected consumer, producer, and credit markets of the global fashion industry. From retailers in Sweden and the United Kingdom to producers in India and Turkey, Patrik Aspers focuses on branded garment retailers--chains such as Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Topshop, and Zara. Aspers investigates these retailers' interactions and competition in the consumer market for fashion garments, traces connections between producer and consumer markets, and demonstrates why market order is best understood through an analysis of its different forms of social construction. Emphasizing consumption rather than production, Aspers considers the larger retailers' roles as buyers in the production market of garments, and as potential objects of investment in financial markets. He shows how markets overlap and intertwine and he defines two types of markets--status markets and standard markets.
In status markets, market order is related to the identities of the participating actors more than the quality of the goods, whereas in standard markets the opposite holds true. Looking at how identities, products, and values create the ordered economic markets of the global fashion business, Orderly Fashion has wide implications for all modern markets, regardless of industry.
Preface ix Introduction 1 The Aims of the Book 4 Order 5 Outline of the Book 9 Chapter 1: Garment Sellers in Consumer Markets 11 Identity 12 Market Differentiation 13 Types of Sellers 19 Competition and Cooperation 26 Splitting and Fusing Markets 31 Summary 33 Chapter 2: Affordable Fashion 34 Identities of Branded Garment Retailers 35 Retailers' Customers 40 Consumption and Identity 43 Price and Garments 46 Fashion 49 Fashion and Power 54 Identity Management 55 The Culture of the Market 57 Status Order 58 Summary 60 Chapter 3: Entrenching Identities 62 Performance Control 63 Relations of Identities 89 Summary 91 Chapter 4: Branded Garment Retailers in the Production Market 94 Design and Fashion 95 Finding Manufacturers 102 Competition among Retailers 112 The Product 117 Retailers' Identities 123 Summary 123 Chapter 5: Manufacturing Garments in the Global Market 125 The Industry from the Perspective of the Manufacturers 126 The Production Process 131 Identity Differentiation and Strategies 136 Price and Global Competition 138 The Market Culture 142 Order Out of Standard 144 Summary 145 Chapter 6: Branded Garment Retailers in the Investment Market 147 Approaching Financial Markets 148 Retailers' Identities in Investor Markets 149 The Stock Market and Its Value 150 Trading Fashion Stocks 155 Evaluation of Stocks 156 Economic Evaluation 158 Summary 162 Chapter 7: Markets as Partial Orders 165 Discussion of the Study 165 Partial Orders 171 Appendix I: Empirical Material and Methods 175 Appendix II: Garment Trade Statistics 181 Appendix III: The Garment Industry 185 Appendix IV: Economic Sociology 191 Appendix V: Fashion Theory and Research 195 Notes 201 References 213 Index 235
