Please Help Me With My Homework / Research?

[Virlly]

Hello, I am doing a research project at uni about World's Fashion cities, I have been researching quite a lot, but there are a lot of questions that I can't find anywhere, and I would like to hear some opinions about this topic..
I am specially focusing on Milan, but any opinion about other city is helpful too.
Does anyone know how fashion cities were chosen/built? I am just thinking about this idea of how starting from 0 a fashion city is created... are they influenced by people living there, factories arround..? how is a fashion city built? does anyone choose them?
Also, all the important fashion cities (New York, Paris, London, Tokyo..) are the capital of their country, how is Milan not the capital of Italy but the main place in fashion there? is it because of its position? its structure as a city? its financiary power?
I am writting about this topic and I can not find a lot of information of Milan as a fashion city without speaking about catwalks all the time..
Can I have some help? it doesnt matter if you talk about Milan or any other fashion city.. this is just an starting point.
Thank you very much

[BetteT]

I did some research for you and found all kinds of things that relate to why Milan is a fashion center.

I would say it starts in the 1500's when Milan was a major stop on the Silk Road ... and silk was traded there.

During the Middle Ages, Milan prospered as a center of trade due to its command of the rich plain of the Po and routes from Italy across the Alps.

source wikipedia

Yang said Milan was a major stop on the Silk Road, playing a key role in exchanges between the East and West of 2000 years ago. ...

source:news/eoportal.org

...nearly 100,000 pounds per year on the average - was sent to Milan

source books.google.com ...The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice bu Luca Mola



And continued because Milan was a major city in Italy ... second only to Rome. It was a major industrial center ... producing goods ... and I bet, if you do further research ... it will include textiles which leads to fashion.

The political unification of Italy (1861) cemented Milan's commercial dominance over northern Italy. It also led to a flurry of railway construction that made Milan the rail hub of northern Italy. Rapid industrialization put Milan at the centre of Italy's leading industrial region

source: wikipedia


Today this describes the city, which shows it's background in the silk industry and banking. And where there is money ... you will find fashion, it's a natural match:

Milan is Italy's economic, financial and fashion center. The city is prosperous and elegant, rich with history in the banking and silk business, art and cuisine.

source: encyclopedia.com

[Virlly]

Thank you so much for your reply BetteT!!! It was very useful... now I am starting to understand everything better... also about this topic of the silk road, I never thought of it before. Thanks, really.

If anyone else has an opinion about this...

[cutefierce]

hello , i need to do a project about DIOR . but when i went to the store noone helped me. and in internet there's nothing. i want it to know if someone could help me. thank you

this is what i need :
1.history about the company ( from inception to present day )
2.mission and vision of the company
3.who is the designer and strong points
4.the new collection ( color story , trends, styles )
5. target market
6.merchandising strategies
7.marketing/advertising stageries
8.summary ( why is successful and why)

[pinksatin]

You can find a lot of the info on their site, dior.com. It's kinda tricky to click at first because the links keep moving, but click fashion and accessories, then women (or whatever you want, but I'm assuming you want women). Then you can choose the country. I don't know what happens for each country, but if you click united states a new window opens and you can view all the collections, ad campaign, videos, whatever. I'm assuming the other countries are just in different languages. I think you will find a lot of the info you are looking for if you click house of dior and watch all the videos about the company. there is chronology info on current collections, museum, tribute, etc. and lots of video. It's kinda annoying for looking through pics though if you want collection pics so I'd just go to style.com for that.

[BetteT]

It's your homework ... so I'll let you do it ... with some direction.

I just googled "history dior" and got all kinds of stuff ... history of Dior himself, subsequent designers ... that should get you more than you need about that first question. Then try googling with dior plus other keywords, like "target market" marketing, advertising ... and I bet you get some stuff on that too. Search here too ... there's a good chance that there's threads about Christian Dior and the subsequent designers ... and we have threads on all the new collections (S/S 09, F/W 09/10) in the Designers & Collections thread.

[cutefierce]

thank you i will try google , changing the words =]

[cutefierce]

thank you =] im going to DIOR right now , i tough those sites where only to sale stuff . thank you

[alord]

Originally Posted by cutefierce

hello , i need to do a project about DIOR . but when i went to the store noone helped me. and in internet there's nothing. i want it to know if someone could help me. thank you

this is what i need :
1.history about the company ( from inception to present day )
2.mission and vision of the company
3.who is the designer and strong points
4.the new collection ( color story , trends, styles )
5. target market
6.merchandising strategies
7.marketing/advertising stageries
8.summary ( why is successful and why)

The best way to get into the most accurate market info, financials etc... is to do the boring research. The fancy books from Rizzoli and other great publishers will give you a great background (just go to amazon to get books), but you really should check the annual financials. Try looking for the Dior 10-k report. In there should be (if they have them bc they are an EU company) a letter from the CEO and some other good business stuff. It won't give you the fluffy, and most of it is numerical gibberish, but it'll be a great tool to use if possible. Professors will be impressed. Good luck! I wish I got to write fun papers like that.

[cutefierce]

Originally Posted by alord

The best way to get into the most accurate market info, financials etc... is to do the boring research. The fancy books from Rizzoli and other great publishers will give you a great background (just go to amazon to get books), but you really should check the annual financials. Try looking for the Dior 10-k report. In there should be (if they have them bc they are an EU company) a letter from the CEO and some other good business stuff. It won't give you the fluffy, and most of it is numerical gibberish, but it'll be a great tool to use if possible. Professors will be impressed. Good luck! I wish I got to write fun papers like that.

thank you =] im researching now =]

[diorrnottwarr]

Hey guys! I'm doing a Sociology paper on the sociology of the fashion industry and was wondering if anyone had any articles or websites handy they'd like to share. I've gone through a ton of books already and found some really great ones but ideally I'd like to have a bigger variety of sources. Thanks for the help!

[gius]

wish i could offer something specific^, there was a very interesting book at the library of my hometown and it wrote especially about cosmetics through history or ideals of beauty.. using lead on the skin or poisonous whitening creams, and also the more commonly known foot binding. it seemed like an old book with illustrated pictures,.. maybe "beast" is in the title or "mirror"

[BetteT]

Originally Posted by Virlly

Hello, I am doing a research project at uni about World's Fashion cities, I have been researching quite a lot, but there are a lot of questions that I can't find anywhere, and I would like to hear some opinions about this topic..
I am specially focusing on Milan, but any opinion about other city is helpful too.
Does anyone know how fashion cities were chosen/built? I am just thinking about this idea of how starting from 0 a fashion city is created... are they influenced by people living there, factories arround..? how is a fashion city built? does anyone choose them?
Also, all the important fashion cities (New York, Paris, London, Tokyo..) are the capital of their country, how is Milan not the capital of Italy but the main place in fashion there? is it because of its position? its structure as a city? its financiary power?
I am writting about this topic and I can not find a lot of information of Milan as a fashion city without speaking about catwalks all the time..
Can I have some help? it doesnt matter if you talk about Milan or any other fashion city.. this is just an starting point.
Thank you very much

I already answered and this may be too late, but I just read something in the WSJ Magazine about Milan and Paris that I'd like to add ... and I think that it has some relevancy:

For the better part of two centuries, armor was all the rage with rulers across Europe and Asia, many of whom paid small fortunes for custom suits designed in armor hubs such as Milan, Nuremberg and Innsbruck.

Regional and national fashion trends also played a huge role. German armorers favored slender, body-hugging designs covered with striped ridges called fluting or floral etchings that imitated popular tunic patterns. By the 1400s, cinched waists and pointed steel shoes were also trendy throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Italian armorers in Milan later caused a frenzy by creating armor featuring rounder, muscular forms as well as stand-alone codpieces shaped like upturned cashews. The respected Missaglia family of armorers opened branches in Paris so they could keep up with orders from faraway nobles, and princes lined up to pay for anything designed by Étienne Delaune of Paris or Milan’s Negroli family.

“When you wanted anything top-of-the-line or flashy, you headed to Milan,” says Jeffrey Forgeng, curator at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass. Merchants, the original nouveau riche, rented suits of armor so they could outfit knights in tournaments and thereby boost their social standing, like today’s car dealers buying uniforms for Little League teams. But by the 17th century, the musket rendered armor nearly useless in warfare. (Scientists at NASA nevertheless studied medieval armor before designing the first space suits.)

link to the rest of the article. http://magazine.wsj.com/gatherer/how...-art-market/2/

Armor was obviously a form of fashion and a way to show wealth, in addition to it's practical uses ... and the trade (armory) seemed to be centered in Milan and that other fashion center, Paris.

[Virlly]

thank you very much for all the help BetteT!!!!

[Virlly]

Hello, I have another question that I hope you can answer for my research, this is more like a survey.
I would like to know your opinion about fashion cities, I know there is a list of top fashion cities each year, but I really need some personal opinions about this:
WHICH FASHION CITY YOU THINK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT AND WHY?
WHICH ONE INFLUENCES MORE THE FASHION WORLD?

I hope you give me your opinion. Thank you very much!