British Fashion Design Rag Trade or Image Industry?

Renowned cultural critic Angela McRobbie explores the tensions between fashion as art form and the demands of a ruthlessly commercial industry. Examining the careers of particular British fashion designers, McRobbie analyzes the impact of fashion media in promoting new talent and its potential for job creation. Photos.

British Fashion Design explores the tensions between fashion as art form, and the demands of a ruthlessly commercial industry. Based on interviews and research conducted over a number of years, Angela McRobbie charts the flow of art school fashion graduates into the industry; their attempts to reconcile training with practice, and their precarious position between the twin supports of the education system and the commercial sector. Stressing the social context of cultural production, McRobbie focuses on British fashion and its graduate designers as products of youth street culture, and analyses how designers from diverse backgrounds have created a labour market for themselves, remodelling `enterprise culture` to suit their own careers.

Acknowledgements, 1 Fashion design and cultural production, 2 Great debates in art and design education, 3 The fashion girls and the painting boys, 4 Fashion education, trade and industry, 5 What kind of industry? From getting started to going bust, 6 A mixed economy of fashion design, 7 The art and craft of fashion design, 8 Manufacture, money and markets in fashion design, 9 A new kind of rag trade?, 10 Fashion and the image industries, 11 Livelihoods in fashion, Notes, References, Index

Angela McRobbie