Business History Review

The Italian fashion industry rose to a position of international prominence in the second half of the twentieth century. An important factor in the sector's global success was the opening up of the international, particularly the American, markets. The changes that occurred within the fashion industry after World War II, most critically the end of the Parisian monopoly, offered opportunities that were exploited differently by the various competitors. While cities like London and New York managed to promote themselves as alternatives to Paris, Italy was initially unable to create a single fashion capital. Florence, Rome, and Milan felt themselves equally entitled to become the staging ground for Italian fashion production, but Milan, benefiting from certain features of its productive structure, eventually emerged as the winner. The city's success was based on a long, steady accumulation of resources and the ability to harness its creative and managerial capabilities. The result was Milan's emergence as a fashion "superstar" in the 1970s.

Histories of the rising popularity of Danish modern furniture in both Denmark and the United States have traditionally ascribed its success to the inherent beauty of Danish design. This article argues that Danish modern furniture succeeded for two other reasons. First, through the creation of powerful narratives, or stories, that framed the way consumers made sense of this furniture; and, second, through the calculated development of a network of individuals and organizations whose goal was to promote and legitimize these narratives.

Scholars have studied innovation from various perspectives, but few have considered the interaction between big business and the fashion marketplace. This study examines the efforts of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company to create and expand the American synthetic-fibers market after World War II. DuPont described this work as transforming the "relatively simple ‘art' of selling fabric" into the "complicated ‘science' of marketing." This process involved developing in-house marketing expertise and reaching out to sources as disparate as American fabric designers, Parisian couturiers, Seventh Avenue manufacturers, southern textile giants, and mass-market retailers. To promote the "wonders" of synthetic fibers, DuPont relied on "fashion intermediaries" to determine what customers wanted and how its fibers could meet those needs. This study suggests that the mass-market success of DuPont's synthetic fibers owed as much to creative marketing, styling, and performance as it did to industrial research and organizational innovation.

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The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change. By Morris L. Bian. Reviewed by Man Bun Kwan.