ABSTRACT
The company’s fashion runway show was about to begin in an hour. Fashion was a crucial marketing strategy in the “the new ‘creative’ thrust of contemporary economic development practice and urban policy,” a key feature in global competition among cities in North America, Europe, and Asia. Fashion houses profited from “perfumes, cosmetics, accessory items that sell precisely because the mythical place of their origin,” such that “‘Paris’ is part of their logo.” Fashion could somehow encapsulate and make possible the horrors of sweatshop labor and the pleasures of designer brands, contradictions embodied in its materials. The work of front of house fashion workers and back of house samplemakers was needed to make the highly specialized runway collections for New York Fashion Week—sample prototypes of garments that would eventually be mass-produced in Asia. The upcoming fashion collection would be based on 1940s designs with the use of translucent, floral prints.
