FASHION: the signature, the brand name

“Fashion & Society”, the article by Pierre Bourdieu and Yvette Delsaut 

“The fashion designer and his signature: contribution to a theory of magic”

 helps us to identify the logic of functioning of the fashion field, polarized between former dominant actors and new contending actors. Focusing more precisely on the mechanisms for creation of value from fashion brands, let us now study the second part of the text. How do fashion brands create value? Is this value based entirely on material considerations (quality, know-how, etc.)? What is the importance of fashion discourse?

The magic of the “signature”

First of all, both sociologists note that it is impossible to conceive the value of a symbolic good from the perspective of its materiality, since they consider that the simple signature is endowed with its own value. This leads them to define the production operation as “an operation of symbolic transubstantiation irreducible to a material transformation”, in particular through the imposition of a signature. This is how the licensing and diversification strategies put in place by couturiers in the 1970s can be understood. Cardin, Féraud or Lapidus decided to transfer the material manufacture of some of their products to other companies (licensees), only to end up imposing their brand against a royalty of 5% of the turnover achieved, following a pure symbolic logic. While the strategy is ultimately comparable to literary and musical production, where the author generally entrusts the production and distribution to others, the fact remains that we do observe an operation of separation between the material and symbolic part of the production. This can be seen for instance with Saint Laurent’s latest attempt of diversification for the opening of its Rive Droite boutique. By producing various objects in partnership, the company essentially imposes its logo without producing it itself, the operation obviously having an impact on the value and price of the product. “If there is one case where we do things with words like in magic, even as in magic (if the magician never does anything other than sell with words the idea that he does something with words), it is in the world of fashion” say Bourdieu and Delsaut, drawing the analogy between magic and fashion brand, between magician and designer.

The arbitrary value creation

Bourdieu and Delsaut highlight the purely arbitrary logic of value creation operated by fashion labels, a creation that is particularly effective because it is based on the “collective ignorance” of consumers. Their creation is identified as a “symbolic capital transfer operation (…) by which an agent or, more precisely, an institution acting through a duly mandated agent, invests a product with value”, the creator’s power being his “ability to mobilize the symbolic energy produced by all the agents involved in the operation of the field”. The press is one of them, as are buyers, loyal customers or competing creators. It is therefore a question for a brand to rely on this network of actors - the field of haute couture - to arbitrarily endow a tangible product with an intangible and symbolic value. Like painting, whose value cannot reside solely in its technical aspect, and is based on a network of critics or galleries, fashion also consists of a media field, a network of buyers and competing designers. This is how we can read the success of some fashion designers and suggest that this success can, more than the quality of their products, be based on an “objective collusion of interests” of the actors of the field.

The celebratory function of the fashion discourse

Thus, fashion discourse only serves a celebratory function or a “performative enunciation”, under the pretext of an apparent objectivity. Let us mention here the case of Vogue. If the successive clothing objects are haloed with an apparent descriptive objectivity, the fact remains that they essentially aim at an advertising logic intended to crown certain products to the detriment of others. The whole effectiveness of the system depends on the fact that its own actors are not necessarily aware of it. Can a journalist sincerely believe in a designer’s genius and praise him without being aware that he is an indirect part of this logic of consecration and increase of the symbolic capital of the creator? 
And it is precisely competition between actors in the same field that tends to hide this arbitrary production of value from consumers and divert their “revolutionary energy”. A consumer disappointed by designer X can certainly switch to designer Y, but his energy will not go against X and he will not challenge the collective ignorance mechanism in place, hence this form of “stability through change” typical of the fashion field.

Fashion and its consecration cycle

As an operation of “transubstantiation” and “ontological promotion” of the material product, the fashion label takes place within what the two sociologists call a “cycle of consecration”. If the production of a material good, a garment in this case, obviously starts from material production, the fact remains that it continues well beyond that. The authors take here the example of Van Gogh in that it would be naive to believe that the painter’s production work is limited to the simple act of painting, this one being accompanied by his journey, his cut ear, as well as his many adventures. Similarly, in the field of fashion production, a Chanel bag is symbolically accompanied by the entire mythified history of G. Chanel, but also by that of K. Lagerfeld, and is not limited to its simple production.

Bourdieu and Delsaut also note that the cycle of consecration of a symbolic good is directly proportional to the importance and length of its consecration circuit. A “good” symbolic capital therefore implies a long consecration cycle, based on a multitude of actors. It is certain that a fashion designer who would only be praised by an article from an obscure fashion magazine cannot benefit from a significant symbolic value. On the other hand, if the designer succeeds in involving buyers, the media and collecting a lot of praise from other designers, it will be much easier for her to build up a strong symbolic capital, obviously associated with the success of her clothes.

The second part of Bourdieu and Delsaut’s article therefore brilliantly contributes to the understanding of the mechanism responsible for the value of the fashion object, oscillating, like many sectors of symbolic production, between material and immaterial elements. More than just material design, the role of the fashion designer is defined by his ability to mobilize a multitude of actors in order to increase his symbolic capital, directly depending on the success of his brand or the company she manages.