Integrating Design and Fashion Marketing

Abstract

Fashion business processes and time are more and more relatedto the retailing and consumer rhythms than to traditionalmanufacturing timetables (Sheridan et al. 2006). Relation betweendesign and marketing capabilities are evolving generatinga field of innovation for the fashion firms. This special sectionof Journal of Global Fashion Marketing aims to offer a discussionabout specific aspects of the interface between fashiondesign and marketing. More precisely the two articles includedin this special section uses secondary research and interviewsin depth with management of specific kinds of fashion firms. The first article, by Preiholt (2012), aims to uncover thereasons why fashion appears in terms of collective selection ina movement towards individual style in the way people dress. Here, fashion is viewed in terms of collective fashion trendsand personal style. Thus, it is the clothes, dressing habits, andgarments that are observed in the research. The paper showshow the theory of symbolic interactionism can be used as ananalytical tool to bring transparency to the movement fromcollective selection towards individual style in the fashionindustry. This theoretical approach, which is connected to socialinteraction helps avoid the classical research trap of makingstatements through the study of cause and effect. The analysisis made based on examples of meanings created aroundthe garment through an observation of the process from the initialmeaning the person gives to as a symbol in social interaction,to the final stage when it becomes an individual style. There are four such phases that together create the final pictureof why fashion is heading towards individual style. Allthese phases have different sources, and naturally provide differentanswers to the initial research question in this paper. Once the garment is turned into an individual style and, ascustomers seek more details in garments, there then occur acollapse of the “total look” towards hyper individuality. The second article, by Guercini and Ranfagni (2012), examinesthe bureaux de style (style agencies) as producers of fashiontrends and their interactions with textile firms in order toanalyze their contribution in terms of knowledge and of competenceto textile innovation processes. The business relationshipsfor innovation has considerable current importance in thetextile sector. Although this industry is considered mature,product innovation, based on the generation and exploitation of fashion trends, represents a fundamental strategic option to facethe increasingly competitive pressure. In particular the papertries to answer the following questions: How do the bureauxde style produce knowledge to generate fashion trends? Whatare the interactions between bureaux de style and textile firmsin the production and sharing of fashion trends? What contributiondo these interactions make to the textile product innovation?The research of Guercini and Ranfagni is based onan examination of the literature, on an analysis of secondarydata and on deep interviews with managers of bureaux destyle located in Italy and in France. The relation between fashion design and marketing is analyzedin these papers under different views and generate insightfulperspective about the future of the fashion industryand important managerial implications. We believe that integratingfashion design and marketing is a fundamental topicto understand future of innovation in the fashion business andfurther research on the topic is needed in the next future.