Fashion IP: From start-up to catwalk: A Four City Investigation
– Prof Angela McRobbie
– Ms Carolina Bandinelli
– Dr Daniel Strutt
– Ms Tania Phipps-Rufus
– Dr Bettina Springer
Summary
This project sought to understand how questions of Intellectual Property impacts on the professional practices of designers and design teams across the spectrum from small graduate led start-ups, to medium-sized designer outlets and also to a handful of retailers in four cities, London, Berlin, Paris and Milan.
Project outputs include:
- Fashion as Urban Creative Economy: Start-ups, IP and the Rise of Ecommerce – this workshop took place on May 5, 2016 at the Glasgow School of Art. The event focussed on questions relating to fashion start-ups, IP/Copyright and new business models that have been carried out over the last 3 years in London, Berlin and Milan.
- Fashion Exchange – London-Berlin – Dialogue – Young Designers and Creative Economy – this workshop explored the future politics and economics of the fashion scenes in Berlin and London.The workshop took place on February 22, 2016 and included involvement by leading fashion designers and entrepreneurs, politicians, journalists and academics from Berlin and London. The event was jointly organized by Professor Angela McRobbie from Goldsmiths and Professor Oliver MacConnell from the bbw Hochschule Berlin.
- Fashion as Urban Scene? Like Berlin techno or ‘Madchester’? – In this blog post, Professor Angela McRobbie reflects on the changing shape of the Fashion industry.
- The Dream Would be Brick Lane – Assessing the Impact of IP Within the European Fashion Industry – in this blog post, Carolina Bandinelli and Angela McRobbie summarise some findings from their work exploring how questions of Intellectual Property impact on the professional practices of designers and design teams within the fashion industry.
- Project poster
The related New Funds project ‘Career pathways and IP issues (London, Berlin and Milan)’ 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.
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.