ABSTRACT
Astute consumers may have extensive ‘cultural capital’ in fashion culture to bring to the experience of shopping, and in intensive, urban environments such capital may be distributed widely among the population, forming a general and often highly developed ‘creative literacy’ in the meaning of particular choices, combinations and uses. The launch of Vogue marks a tipping point in the development of Chinese fashion and fashion media, linking China more closely to the international fashion system, and setting new standards in photography, style and design in Chinese fashion publishing. The growth of magazines and the rapid improvement in their content demonstrates the importance of mediating mechanisms in social network markets. A wider readership – ‘reading public’ – of fashion media consumers needs to be nurtured, to exert increasingly ‘literate’ demand-pressure on the system from those with a stake in a social network market for risk culture, creative imagination and consumer entrepreneurship.
