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Conference at the V&A

The Enterprise of Culture: the European fashion system around the world

The final project conference took place in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre at the V&A in London on 10 June 2016.

Organised by team members from the V&A and the University of Leeds, this event brought together academics, fashion industry practitioners, students, archivists, museum curators and the general public. This free one-day conference showcased new research by the EOC team on design, innovation and branding in the European fashion industry since 1945. It offered insights into the European fashion industry around the world, examining influential brands from Biba and Mary Quant to today’s H&M; Italian fashion and American department store buyers; Scottish tartans, tweeds and national identity; and the transformation of Paris from the site of haute couture to the home of luxury brands.

Speakers included Enterprise of Culture (EOC) team members and associated partners, alongside curators from the V&A and the Yorkshire Fashion Archive. The sessions were chaired by team members Ben Wubs (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Sonnet Stanfill (V&A). The conference team was supported on the day by staff from the V&A’s Research Department and two student volunteers from the Royal College of Art.

The conference was introduced by Stanfill in her capacity as Associated Partner with the Enterprise of Culture and as Acting Senior Curator of 20th Century and Contemporary Fashion at the V&A. Project Leader Regina Lee Blaszczyk put the project’s research into context within the overarching theme of the day’s conference papers. Principal Investigator Véronique Pouillard (Oslo) started the first session with a talk on networks, markets and challenges for haute couture in the post-war era. Principal Investigator Ben Wubs shifted the discussion to the rise of luxury brands, looking at the example of the French holding company Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) as the embodiment of the major organisational changes in the fashion and luxury industry since the 1970s. Edwina Ehrman, Curator of the V&A’s exhibition Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, looked at the creation and marketing of luxury lingerie brand, Janet Reger, created in 1967. Despite being acclaimed as ‘the queen of luxury lingerie’ and having a turnover of around £1million, Reger’s company went into liquidation sixteen years later. This talk sought to define what luxury lingerie was in the 1970s and why Reger’s business failed.

Session two consisted of short seven-minute talks on projects associated with the Enterprise of Culture project. Postdoctoral Researcher Tereza Kuldova (Oslo) examined copyright law through a case study of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle syndicate and its use of legal mechanisms to protect gang insignia and spin-off fashion apparel and accessories labels. Elaine Evans, Teaching Fellow and curator at the Yorkshire Fashion Archive (University of Leeds), showcased the ongoing collaboration between her collection and the EOC that culminated in The Synthetics Revolution exhibition.

The third session was a round table discussion, chaired by Lou Stoppard (SHOWstudio's Editor and a freelance writer, curator and broadcaster from London). Other London-based participants included Simon Chilvers, men's style director, MATCHESFASHION.COM; Rosanna Falconer, business director at Matthew Williamson; and Mandi Lennard, head of Mandi’s Basement. Because the conference coincided with London Fashion Week, this industry panel added a contemporary slant to the proceedings and opened up new lines of discussion from the perspective of the fashion industry. Themes included the recent changes to the European fashion industry in the age of fast fashion; the future of Fashion Week; the impact of the digital revolution; the decline of ‘bricks and mortar’ stores and the rise of online retailing; globalisation; and ethical/sustainability issues around fashion.

The fourth session began with a paper by AP Stanfill, who examined American department store buyers and Italian fashion in the post-war period with reference to the buyer’s important role as a tastemaker. Drawing on new research in Italian and American archives, Stanfill provided a dynamic picture of the process of viewing, selecting and importing garments from Italy to the United States in the 1950s, a period which coincided with Italy’s emergence as a fashion centre. Project Leader Blaszczyk drew on her research for Fashionability to examine the history of design and innovation at Abraham Moon and Sons within the context of the global clothing and fashion industries from the 1830s to today. She considered what it takes to battle the odds in an ageing industry and to come out on top, presenting her original research on one of Yorkshire’s longest living woollen mills, which today serves global brands such as Burberry, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, and Polo Ralph Lauren.

The final session focused on the theme of brands and corporate identity at the national and international levels. Speaking on behalf of the teams at Heriot-Watt and Newcastle, Project Member Dr Andrew MacLaren (Heriott-Watt) offered a new look at the strategies of Biba and Mary Quant, two brands famously associated with the Swinging London era but little-analysed from the perspective of management studies. MacLaren presented the two businesses as early examples of lifestyle brands that leveraged new consumer behaviour patterns to create some of Britain’s first successful clothing brands for youth culture.

Project member Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson (Centre for Business History, Stockholm) considered some of the core values at the heart of the Swedish global fashion brand, H&M. H&M is a Swedish company that is now internationally known but has never, unlike IKEA, trumpeted its ‘Swedishness’. Giertz-Mårtenson explained how many of the guiding principles behind its corporate philosophy and culture can be traced back to Swedish social and political thinking.

The session ended with a paper on Scottish tartans and tweeds from the research team at the University of St Andrews, represented by Principal Investigator Dr Shiona Chillas and Project Members Professor Barbara Townley and Melinda Grewar. The paper explored how versions of the past inform contemporary understandings of tartan and tweed, identifying how national, archival and embodied histories are used selectively as resources in producing and marketing the fabrics and in creating symbolic associations with provenance, purity and luxury.

The conference finished with closing remarks from Stanfill and Wubs. Given the fact that the V&A was open on Friday evening, participants were encouraged to end the day by viewing the exhibitions, including Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear.

Feedback from the audience evaluation forms was extremely positive. Many delegates had attended other project events but there were plenty of new attendees. Comments highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of the conference; one delegate liked ‘the approach to research of the Enterprise of Culture project, interdisciplinary design and business history’.

The audience pointed to the fact that the V&A conference highlighted the global theme that was the focus of Year Four, as well as our continued effort to connect academia and industry: ‘The Enterprise of Culture highlighted a global situation’; ‘Interdisciplinary. Historical and contemporary. Made efforts to also address wider global context. Good to also bring in Lou Stoppard and Mandi Lennard for journalistic and industry expertise’; ‘Fashion development / business practices. Changing face of fashion week’; and ‘Interesting hearing the fashion industry roundtable on current changes as a contrast’.