Career Pathways and IP Issues in Digital Fashion: London, Berlin and Milan
– Prof Angela McRobbie
– Ms Carolina Bandinelli
– Dr Daniel Strutt
Summary
This project looked at young people’s working lives and experience of ‘creative labour’ in fashion. There were two inter-related research questions. First, what impact has the growth of digital commerce and online sales in the fashion sector had for developing new forms of ‘fashion-technology’ job creation,especially for young people, in the context of European-wide economic recession? And second, how does this new e-commercial sphere impact on the design rights and protection of copyright and IP for both the large companies and for small ‘independents’ or micro-fashion designers? The project team looked at working conditions, social relations, and the protection of originality, and IP as an embedded aspect of fashion and fashion-related design practice and attempted to establish how digital and online fashion impacts on questions of copyright and IP. This project is closely reated to Fashion IP: From start-up to catwalk: A Four City Investigation.
Project outputs include:
- Fashion micro-enterprises in London, Berlin, Milan – this report provides an account of a series of interviews, observational visits and hosted events with 8-10 fashion designers in three cities: London, Berlin and Milan, carried out from 2012-2016.
- Spaces of Fashion: Digital, Technologies, and Labour Processes – this half-day event summarises the research findings presented in Fashion micro-enterprises in London, Berlin, Milan. The event takes place on March 1, 2017 in Milan.
- Design and ‘the Social’: Mapping new Approaches to Inequality in Design – this session looks at inequality and design and will be chaired by Professor Angela McRobbie at the LSE on February 7, 2017.
- De-Centralising London As Fashion’s Epicentre – this article explores the key issues facing young fashion designers wanting to set up their own label. Professor Angela McRobbie introduces this publication in a blog post for CREATe.
- Gender and Creative Economy: Networking and Learning Support – the workshop took place on October 14, 2016 and reflected on how women, across the boundaries of age, sex, class and ethnicity, region and country, find themselves positioned in regard to both current debates on the rise of the creative economy and in the context of the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent period of austerity.
- Concepts and Methods in a Cross Sectoral Frame – this workshop explored methods and themes in creative industries research. Professor Angela McRobbie summarised the event in a blog post.