Begær, forførelse og kvindelig skønhed: Den globale luksusmode i netværksøkonomien

Translated title of the contribution: Desire, seduction and female beauty: The global luxury fashion in the network economy

    Publications: Book / Anthology / Thesis / ReportPh.D. thesis

    Abstract

    The doctoral thesis ’Desire, seduction and female beauty: The global luxury fashion in the network economy’ is an analysis of the new re-structured global luxury fashion. One of the main assertions in the thesis is that a new luxury fashion culture emerges around the end of the 1980’s. This is a transition from the old industrial organization to a new informational and cultural production system that had been emerging since the World War Two. This different mode of production and consumption has generally been analyzed as the network economy by sociologist like Manuel Castells and John Urry. The new luxury fashion system can be described as massified, mediatized, corporatized, globalized and brandified. Through the history of the French company Louis Vuitton it is possibly to illustrate this transition: In 1977 the company was a family owned luxury luggage and bag company with two domestic shops in France and with an annual turnover of roughly £ 8.000.000. In 2006 Louis Vuitton was a fashion brand with 369 global shops, an annual turnover of more than £ 2.000.000.000 and owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH quoted on the global Stock Exchanges.
    The main purpose of doctoral thesis is to analyze and explain how this new luxury fashion system works and how it can be said to reflect a new phase in the history of fashion clothing. In order to make this analysis a theoretical frame is developed. Luxury fashion is recognized as a kind of eco system, a complex culture industry made up of many actors: fashion corporations/brand owners, production industries, textile industries, media and entertainment industries and consumers to mention the most significant ones.  In this fashion analysis the various clothes objects are just seen as tiny parts in a larger circle of desire. The doctoral thesis challenges the dominant fashion theory on many levels: Through the introduction of theories from the natural sciences - evolutionary psychology, biology and network and complexity theories - it becomes possible to confront the (closed) social constructivist and culturalist Marxist theory complex that has been favoured in much theoretical writing on fashion. The epistemological position of this work is the so-called interactionist framework that allows a theoretical thinking where interactions between biology, psychology, social organization and cultural constructions are combined.

    The Doctoral thesis is divided in three parts: Chapter 2 -3 is a theoretical clarification of various terminologies used in luxury theory, fashion theory and theories about the network economy. Chapter 4 – 6 is a meta-theoretical critique of some dominant foundations of the current fashion theory. In this part alternative theory is introduced and finally new theoretical tools are developed. Chapter 7 and 8 is the final synthesis where all delimits, insights, contextualizations and theoretical tools identified and developed in the previous two parts are combined in order to analyze and understand the re-structured luxury fashion system.


    The first part has three main focus areas: what is luxury and fashion, the moralistic hatred against luxury and fashion, and a short introduction to theories about the network economy. A discussion of the sociological and anthropological theories on fashion ends with a proposition: It is beneficial to distinguish between three different usages of the concept fashion within theory. 1) Fashion as aesthetic changes in many human practises 2) Fashion as a sociological meta-concept; a social organizational logic that governs life in the modern consumer societies. This organizational structure has been criticized by a range of Marxist influenced sociologist, i.e. Benjamin and Baudrillard. 3) Fashion as a culture industry centred around feminine adornment and clothing; a culture industry that formally was institutionalized with Haute Couture in France in 1868. Here one of the major theoretical propositions in the doctoral thesis is introduced: that the culture industry of fashion is less driven by fashion changes as stated in the dominant fashion theory. Its real engine is female beauty production. It is ‘fashion as a culture industry’ that is the subject of the doctoral thesis. But as this culture industry exists in the modern consumer societies the introduction to the sociological critical theory serves numerous purposes. First, here is the source to one of the contemporary moral denunciations of fashion adornment: a critique of capitalism. Secondly, many contemporary sociologists that write about the post-industrial societies tend to condemn advertising practises and consumption of symbolic goods through the same capitalism critique, i.e. Baudrillard, Appadurai, Bauman, Campbell or Williams. This relates directly to the next subject. Through sociological theory of globalization and post-industrial production (Castells, Urry, Rifkin, Taylor) the concept of network economy is introduced. In this section the most important social, economical and technological socio-technical forces that influences the re-structured luxury fashion is identified (Sassen, Urry, Lash, Rifkin), i.e. geographical power structures, economic de-regulation, the global production of desire through advertising and images, and individualization (Ulrich Beck, Castells).

    The second part deals with six main areas: 1) An analysis of the social constructivist feminist foundation in much contemporary theory of fashion within the social sciences and humanities. This leads to the second source for the contemporary moral denunciations of fashion adornment: A gender feminist critique of sexual difference and female (heterosexual) beauty and fashion practises. 2) It is argued that in the future the culture industry of fashion is likely to be accused severely from the gender-feminist theoretical position that is highly moralistic. As the gender feminist ideology increasingly are becoming an institutionalized bureaucratic power in the post-industrial societies, fashion is recognized as an obstacle for the abstract call for gender equality - understood as an ideal for statistical sameness in all important life matters between men and women; i.e. economy, work interest, time and interest devoted to children, domestic labour division, sex object positions. Because fashion is a culture industry heavily engaged in symbolic production of gender difference (female beauty and seduction) it is recognized as a negative drive in the new un-gendered Utopia. 3) A challenge of the (closed) social constructivist view of gender through theory from the natural sciences (i.e. genetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, hormonal science, evolutionary psychology) that points towards ‘hard wired’ or innate sexual differences in humans and mammals. According to this theory much gendered human behaviour cannot be reduced to arbitrary cultural conditioning. 4) Introduction to the key concepts of evolutionary psychological theory . According to this theory, the primitive male and female mating psychology is asymmetrical. Females of mammal species are always a scarce resource in the sexual economy. Because of this women have always been able to use their sexual attraction as a resource to gain personal privileges according to how much room a given culture left open for female and individual choices. Pornography, prostitution, internet dating, discotheque life and fashion are all contemporary phenomena related to the sexual asymmetry in the mammals. 5) An analysis of gender feminist critique of fashion images, especially women as (heterosexual) sex objects. The gender feminist theory is heavily influenced by an interpretation of Freud’s fetishism theory. Through a mixture of social constructivist theory and psychoanalysis much gender feminist theory has asserted that men (in patriarchal cultures) suffer from castration anxiety. 6) The Doctoral thesis argues that the Freudian fetishism theory is highly unlikely and through a combination of anthropological theory and evolutionary theory an alternative tentative theory of fetishism is developed. This part of the thesis ends with a taxonomy over the sexual fetish objects. Further it is found that the producers in the fashion culture industry use sexual fetishism as an important value parameter in their beautifying products.

    With theoretical tools from the natural sciences it becomes possible to challenge the gender feminist fashion theory that seems to renounce female heterosexual beautifying fashion practises as false consciousness. Further, a theoretical foundation for one of the main propositions of the doctoral theses, is laid out: It is female beautification that is the engine of fashion (the culture industry) not fashion changes. It is now possibly to analyze the new luxury fashion from a radical different perspective.

    The third part, the synthesis, draws on the previous contextualizations and connects all the various theoretical tools in order to explain the new globalized and re-structured luxury fashion system. Through metaphors from network and complexity theory from the natural sciences the luxury fashion is theorized as a kind of ecosystem made up of many actors and ingredients that interact and create a dynamic co-evolving emergence. Two theoretical phenomena, ‘fashion scapes’ and ‘global fashion control cites’, are invented and defined as significant in the new global fashion order. In the final section the biological theory that assert an asymmetrical sexual differences between men and women are connected to theories of the consumer society, individualization and the career oriented professional worker’s fight for survival on ever-unstable job and love markets. Lipovestky’s social constructivist philosophy of the woman in the consumer society – his concept of the celebratory dual role of woman as beautiful sex and woman as consumeress – are coupled with evolutionary theory. It becomes possible to explain why fashion must have such a great importance for women today. In a system where social mobility and female personal autonomy rules it seems inevitable that women would try to maximise their personal opportunities through fashion adornment in order to attract potential mates, and possibly more important, in order to enhance their professional career. It is argued that it will not be sufficient to look at economic theories, branding theories or general theories of the luxury phenomenon if we want to understand luxury fashion. It is the female attraction and sexual difference that is engine of the luxury fashion and this point is obviously realized and reflected in the marketing material of the fashion companies. Luxury fashion products only have effect if they can fulfil the main purpose of fashion: to beautify the female consumers.


    Translated title of the contributionDesire, seduction and female beauty: The global luxury fashion in the network economy
    Original languageDanish
    Place of PublicationDanmarks Designskole
    PublisherDanmarks Designskole
    Volume1
    Edition1
    Number of pages380
    ISBN (Print)87-92016-06-5
    Publication statusPublished - 2008

    Keywords

    • fashion
    • fashion and culture economy
    • fashion branding
    • fashion research
    • critique of gender feminism
    • evolutionary psychology
    • sexual difference
    • luxury fashion

    Artistic research

    • No

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