Fashion and Artification in the French Luxury Fashion Industry

Abstract

Fashion design is created in systems of collaborative relationships comparable to art worlds but fashion systems differ from art worlds in the relative emphasis on economic considerations and in the utility of what is produced. A brief history of the French fashion systems underlying haute couture and luxury ready-to-wear fashion reveals that both systems exhibited a tendency toward partial artification, as seen in the creation of designs with avant-garde connotations, although designers were primarily concerned with economic rewards. This tendency was reversed toward the end of the 20th century as both types of designers ceded control over their firms to luxury fashion conglomerates. The importance of fashion collectibles as a form of cultural heritage increased with the emergence of fashion museums but auction prices of fashion collectibles are significantly lower than in the fine arts. Higher auction prices for fashion collectibles occur in cases of celebrity validation or when the fashion collectible has some connection with fine art.