Prestige, Parity, Pedagogy and Purpose: Exploring Sustainable Prosperity (and lack thereof) in Historical Fashion Networks

Studies of fashion employing a sustainability lens are becoming increasingly prevalent. It is clear to researchers (alongside practitioners and consumers) that fashion must change its profit-centric focus, yet how to achieve this remains undecided. “Sustainable prosperity” approaches which account for the personal, cultural, societal and environmental and define success beyond profit, have increasingly come to the fore (Williams et al., 2021). Yet, these frameworks often fail to consider historical developments which have created today’s global fashion industry. Focusing on businesses established before the rise of fast fashion, this paper explores how we can employ a “sustainable prosperity” approach to examine the equity and prosperity of historical fashion businesses, industries, international networks, and their practices. It questions how prosperity might historically have been understood beyond financial success, exploring cases within fashion firms and sectors outside of traditionally successful and well-studied haute couture brands and international conglomerates.

This approach provides a broader view into the state and success of historical fashion sectors and networks accounting for the source dearth issue which often plagues those studying historical clothing and fashion businesses. Utilising examples from the 19th and 20th centuries, this paper suggests that business history of fashion methodologies should increasingly employ broader definitions of prosperity which acknowledge social, environmental, reputational, and collective as well as economic and technological success.

The paper examines two associated cases, the German and British fashion industries during the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. These two sectors were selected due to their extensive historical textile and fashion industries which feature mid-tier businesses engaged within international fashion networks, their comparable relationships to the global fashion capital Paris, the strong community ties that bind them together facilitating trade and movement, and the challenge that a lack of sources poses to the analysis of their sectoral success. Using contemporary industry reports, trade press editorials, articles and advertisements alongside secondary research from fashion history and labour history as sources the paper demonstrates how key sustainable prosperity measures have been integrated into business, sectoral and international practices.