Elite fashion and mass production (Ideas codification)

Fashion is a complex and influential form of knowledge. It explores the effects of fashion ideas on the global garment system through a case study of the ideas and commodity flows that bring fashions and garments to the market.


Most cosumers can not acces to the elite fashion which appears on major Fashion shows
and fashion weeks.

It's difficult to think about clothing without considering fashion and elite styles.

Trends are generalised through ideas collected from styles and designer's work. So, what you buy is a limited range of clothing styles which are inspired from current fashion. And they are produced by major garment companies.

Fashion's styling is forming structured spaces that bind the elite fashion system to mass production. Briefly, the famous styles that rely in major stores  are produced by garment firms with respect to the current fashion rules.

And of course there's a system protecting the proprietary knowledge at the mass production phase. Nowadays, fashion firms encounter major problems on how to protect their knwoledge  and controversly share it with others without leaking ideas.

In the orher hand, mass production style's companies share designs and fashion freely.
Understanding fashion business requires an understanding of the flow of fashion styles and knowledge across space. Complex knowledges are viscous, they are slow to diffuse, while codified or abstracted styles  are fluid and contagiously spreading.

So we can see that complex fashion ideas and elite are more original and naturally protected from leaking and imitation. Generalised and less codified style's ideas are more encountered to transmission and flowness.
So the knowledge of codification of styles is the clue to protect one firm's elite from
copying companies.

Elite firms do not have the option of limiting fashion knowledge flows by restricting the flow of information, since media recognition is indispensable to their business models.

Actually, mass media and contemporary information transmission speeds up the the diffusion and the rate of fashion ideas, and change the nature of information to be publicly accesible.
So restiction of information become a challenge for elite firms to protect their (savoir-faire) knowledge.