From artist to curator, couturier to fashion blogger, 'creative' professional identities can be viewed as social practices, enacted, performed and negotiated through the media, the public, and industry. Fashioning Professionals addresses what it means to be a creative professional, historically and in the digital age, as new ways of working and doing business have given rise to new professional identities. Bringing together critical reflections from international researchers, the book spans fashion, design, art, architecture, and advertising. It examines both traditional and emergent roles in creative industries, from advertising executives and surrealist artists to mannequin designers, pop stylists, bloggers, makers and design curators. The book reveals how professional identities are continually in a state of fashioning, through style, taste, gender and cultural representation, highlighting moments of friction and flux in the creative labour of the global economy. Interweaving critical perspectives from fashion and design history with sociology and cultural theory, Fashioning Professionals addresses a burgeoning area of research as we enter new terrain in fashion and the creative industries.

Stylists have become increasingly influential in shaping fashion imagery. They have moved from the backstage, as unrecognised players, to the frontstage of fashion, becoming celebrated for their creative work as image makers for magazines, advertising and fashion designers. Yet little is known about the profession, its diverse incarnations and its aesthetic economy. Featuring contributions from leading experts and stylists, this collection is the first to explore the history, meaning and practice of fashion styling through interviews and historic and present-day case studies. Featuring in-depth contributions from prominent fashion scholars, chapters span historical periods, cultural contexts and theoretical frameworks, employing a range of methodologies in the international case studies upon which they're based. Interspersed with interviews with innovative fashion stylists working today, and drawing on examples from advertising, the catwalk and magazines, this book explores the challenges faced by stylists in a fashion system increasingly shaped by commercial pressures and by growing numbers of collections and seasons. Fashion Stylists is an invaluable resource for students and professionals interested in image-making, the representation of style and fashion, entrepreneurship and the history of fashion professionals.

The Rise of the Stylist examines the social factors that contributed to the stylist becoming a key role in fashion image-making. The 1980s' stylist is presented as a cultural intermediary and auteur, as commercial compass and avant-garde innovator. Focusing on London from 1980 to 1990, Philip Clarke draws on oral history interviews with the young creatives who were involved in the specific subcultural scenes, educational environments and new modes of publishing that informed a unique moment in British cultural life. By documenting the history of the stylist in fashion and dress, as well as their contribution to fields such as food photography and car manufacture, this study looks beyond the style press and bridges the gap between production and promotion. The Rise of the Stylist defines the specific nature of the stylist's role in relation to that of other creative occupations and locates discussion of styling within the context of postmodern society, where political shifts, technological developments and changing attitudes in all fields of cultural production are reflected in the manufacture and dissemination of fashion.

How design collaboration, networks, and narratives contributed to the establishment of a recognized English couture industry in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1930s and 1940s, English fashion houses, spurred by economic and wartime crises, put London on the map as a major fashion city. In this book, Michelle Jones examines the creation of a London-based couture industry during these years, exploring how designer collaboration and the construction of specific networks and narratives supported and shaped the English fashion economy. Haute couture—the practice of creative made-to-measure womenswear—was widely regarded as inherently French. Jones shows how an English version emerged during a period of economic turbulence, when a group of designers banded together in a collective effort to shift power within the international fashion system. Jones considers the establishment of this form of English design practice, analyzing the commercial, social, and political factors that shaped the professional identity of the London couturiers. She focuses on collaborative activity that supported this form of elite, craft-based fashion production—from the prewar efforts of the Fashion Group of Great Britain to the wartime establishment of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, modeled loosely after French fashion’s governing body, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. It was these collective efforts by couturiers that established and sustained London’s place as an internationally recognized center for creative fashion.

This book traces the social backgrounds, educational experiences and subsequent lives of women who attended the university colleges in Wales from their inception to the outbreak of the Second World War. Using a sample of 2,000 graduates, the book foregrounds the experience of working-class women and critically assesses the claim of social inclusivity built around education in Wales. It charts changes and continuities in women’s career prospects; explores graduates’ relationship with the communities in which they studied, lived, and worked; and, finally, examines the extensive networks which underpinned their personal and professional lives.

This book considers the sociology of technology from a postmodernist perspective. Arguing for a rethinking of design in the light of its cultural significance. It looks at the nature of design; the new aesthetic movements and the consequences for design; the question of participatory design; and the paradigmatic shift; from modern to postmodern. It also looks forward to the immaterial society.