Re-presentation Policies of the Fashion Industry

Conclusion

Capitalist production has unified space, which is no longer limited by outside companies. This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive process of trivialization¹. The accumulation of mass-produced goods for the abstract space of the market, just as it had to break down all regional and legal barriers, and all the corporate restrictions of the Middle Ages that maintained the quality of artisanal production, also had to dissolve the autonomy and quality of places. This homogenization power is the heavy artillery that brought down all the walls of China². (Debord 1992, p. 129, author’s translation)

These lines originally written in 1967 by Guy Debord sound like a prophecy of the current socioeconomic and symbolic situation of the luxury fashion industry. They point both to the implementation of an industrial production of luxury goods, the globalization of the sector, the geographical displacement of know-how transformed into cheap goods, but also to the economic power represented by the homogenization of the sector. By way of conclusion, I would like to put forward the contributions of this research first with regard to the object of this study – the fashion of commercial luxury goods, its industrialization, its re-presentation apparatus – and second with regard to the theoretical and methodological approach adopted.

C.1. Unification: trivialization and industrialization of representation

At the start of this research, two hypotheses were presented. ...