New York, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo. This familiar list of cities conjures up the image of high fashion. This book examines the powerful relationship between metropolitan modernity and fashion culture. The authors look at the significance of certain key sites in fashion's world order and at transformations in the connections between key cities. The status of fashion capital has now become a goal for urban boosters and planners, part of the wider promotion of the 'cultural economy' of major cities. In a rapidly changing global fashion system, new centres like Shanghai are making claims to join the ranks of Fashion's World Cities. In chapters ranging from Los Angeles to Moscow and Dakar to Mumbai, Fashion's World Cities explores the relationship between major metropolises and the production, consumption and mythologizing of fashion.

An insight into the intricacies of contemporary fashion in four African cities. From couture to street style, from luxury to thrifting, this publication provides a shapshot of some of Africa's most exciting contemporary fashion scenes in Nairobi (Kenya), Casablanca (Morocco), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa)

A deep appreciation and a wild visual ride through the wonderland of Los Angeles-style Los Angeles harbors its own canon of styles: Romantic Bohemian, Glamour, Skater and Surfer, Rocker, Chola-Style, Indie-Eclectic, and Casual Chic—each shaped by the unique mix of subcultures, climates, geography, history, and personalities that have coexisted in different pockets of the greater LA area. These signature looks continue to inspire celebrities, clothing designers, and stylists the world over. In City of Style, Melissa Magsaysay, style editor for the Los Angeles Times, draws on decades of the best, most iconic examples of LA-style and explores the trends, tastes, and fashion innovations of today's Angelenos—while offering a taste of the retail landscape, a guide to stores and shops, and helpful tips on how to buy and wear key pieces for each different style. Featuring exclusive interviews with Los Angeles's most influential designers, retailers, and trendsetters, including: Monique Lhuillier Trina Turk Tony Hawk Georgina Chapman (Marchesa) Phillip Lim Slash Cameron Silver Cynthia Rowley And more.

The fashionable, eccentric pedestrians of Tokyo are captured with hundreds of portrait photographs in this fun guide to Tokyo street fashion. Tokyo is considered one of the world's style capitals for its vibrant youth fashion culture. Part guide book, part fashion photography album, Tokyo Fashion City takes a stroll through eight Tokyo neighborhoods, each with its own unique fashion characteristics, to see what streetwise young Tokyoites are wearing, where they're shopping, what they're eating and drinking, and where they're hanging out. Author Philomena Keet and photographer Yuri Manabe accompany the reader to Harajuku where high fashion rubs shoulders with hip-hop style; to Shibuya, birthplace of the "gal" and stomping ground for Tokyo's most sophisticated fashionistas; to hipster hangout Daikanyama; to the goth and geek meccas of Shinjuku and Ikebukuro; to bohemian Koenji and otaku neighborhood Nakano; to Ginza's lunching ladies and dapper gentlemen; to the cosplay paradise of Akihabara; and to the narrow lanes of East Tokyo, where everyday Japanese fashion gets a traditional touch. Each chapter is packed with photographs of young fashionistas captured as they go about their daily lives, with info-rich captions, and insightful text giving the background to the trends and tribes featured. With the inclusion of area maps, and shop and cafe listings, Tokyo Fashion City is an indispensable resource for readers wishing to keep a finger on Tokyo's style pulse.

Learn how fashion developed in Britain from the early 1970s, when designer fashion scarcely existed, to the present day, when London ranks alongside Paris, New York and Milan as a global fashion capital.

The field of culture is increasingly seen as a strategic asset in/for a balanced development of cities. Recent research, however, seems to point to a limited recognition of this potential in local policy-making, culture becoming increasingly linked to aims of economic repositioning. But which aims are exactly involved here? Are we indeed facing a new dominant (and unilateral) approach to culture in Western European cities, leaving the full development potential of the field unexplored? And why might this be the case? Through case studies of fashion in Antwerp, Milan and Amsterdam, the changing strategising of culture in local development (since the 1980s), is linked to the search for new governing arrangements between public and private (cultural) actors within the cities. On the basis of this analysis, a plea is made for a new, and more integrated approach to culture in Western European cities, pointing to the significant challenge of experimenting with new, and more inclusive forms of public-private policy-making in support of this agenda.

The Routledge Companion to Urban Media and Communication traces central debates within the burgeoning interdisciplinary research on mediated cities and urban communication. The volume brings together diverse perspectives and global case studies to map key areas of research within media, cultural and urban studies, where a joint focus on communications and cities has made important innovations in how we understand urban space, technology, identity and community. Exploring the rise and growing complexity of urban media and communication as the next key theme for both urban and media studies, the book gathers and reviews fast-developing knowledge on specific emergent phenomena such as: reading the city as symbol and text; understanding urban infrastructures as media (and vice-versa); the rise of global cities; urban and suburban media cultures: newspapers, cinema, radio, television and the mobile phone; changing spaces and practices of urban consumption; the mediation of the neighbourhood, community and diaspora; the centrality of culture to urban regeneration; communicative responses to urban crises such as racism, poverty and pollution; the role of street art in the negotiation of ‘the right to the city’; city competition and urban branding; outdoor advertising; moving image architecture; ‘smart’/cyber urbanism; the emergence of Media City production spaces and clusters. Charting key debates and neglected connections between cities and media, this book challenges what we know about contemporary urban living and introduces innovative frameworks for understanding cities, media and their futures. As such, it will be an essential resource for students and scholars of media and communication studies, urban communication, urban sociology, urban planning and design, architecture, visual cultures, urban geography, art history, politics, cultural studies, anthropology and cultural policy studies, as well as those working with governmental agencies, cultural foundations and institutes, and policy think tanks.

Fashion and Cultural Studies addresses the growing interaction between the two fields. Bridging theory and practice, it draws on cultural diversity in fashion, dress and style in the context of globalization and its varied cultural-historical underpinnings.

Cities have become increasingly important to global politics, but have largely occupied a peripheral place in the academic study of International Relations (IR). This is a notable oversight for the discipline, although one which may be explained by IR’s traditional state centrism, the subjugation of the city to the demands of the territorial state in the modern period, and a lack of conceptual and analytical frameworks that can allow scholars to include the impact of cities within their work. Presenting case-specific scholarship from leading experts in the field, each contribution guides the reader through the changing nature of cities in the international system and their increasing prominence in global governance outcomes. The book features case studies on the financial power of cities, city action in the security domain, collaboration of cities in coping with environmental problems, transnational urban regions, and mayors as international actors to illustrate if the relationship between the city and the state has changed in profound ways, and how cities are empowered by structural changes in world politics. The multidisciplinary and global focus in The Power of Cities in International Relations sheds much needed light on the significance of the reemergence of cities from the long shadow of the nation-state. Only by examining the mechanisms that have empowered cities in the last few decades can we understand their new functions and capabilities in global politics.

Drastic changes in the career aspirations of women in the developed world have resulted in a new, globalised market for off-the-peg designer clothes created by independent artisans. This book reports on a phenomenon that seems to exemplify the twin imperatives of globalisation and female emancipation. A major conceptual contribution to the literatures on globalisation, fashion and gender, analysing the ways in which women’s entry into the labour force over the past thirty years in the developed world has underpinned new forms of aestheticised production and consumption as well as the growth of ‘work-style’ businesses A vital contribution to the burgeoning literature on culture and creative industries which often ignores the significant roles taken by women as entrepreneurs and designers rather than mere consumers Introduces fashion scholars and economic geographers to a paradigmatic example of the new designer fashion industries emerging in a range of countries not traditionally associated with fashion Takes a fresh perspective on an industry in which Third World garment workers have been the subject of exhaustive analysis but first world women have been largely ignored