Fashioning Professionals ─ Identity and Representation at Work in the Creative Industries

From artist to curator, couturier to fashion blogger, 'creative' professional identities can be viewed as social practices; enacted, performed and negotiated through the media, the public, and industry. Fashioning Professionals addresses the key question of what it means to be a creative professional both historically and today. In the digital age, new ways of working and doing business are on the rise, accompanied by new professions and identities.

Bringing together a range of critical reflections from international researchers, spanning fashion, design, art, architecture and advertising, the book examines both traditional and pioneering roles in creative industries, from the advertising executives and surrealist artists to mannequin designers, pop stylists, digital age bloggers and design curators. With case studies highlighting moments of friction and flux in the creative labor of the global economy, the book reveals how professional identities are continually in a state of fashioning, through style, taste, gender and cultural representation.

Interweaving critical perspectives from fashion and design history with sociology and cultural theory, Fashioning Professionals addresses a burgeoning area of research as we enter a new terrain in fashion and the creative industries.

Felice McDowell is Associate Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She has formerly worked for SHOWstudio, the Fashion in Film Festival, Frieze, the National Portrait Gallery and the Arts Council Collection.

Leah Armstrong is Senior Researcher in Design History at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria. She has formerly worked as a researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the University of Brighton and the Glasgow School of Art, UK.