Fashion and the Mass Consumer Society in Britain, c. 1950 - 2000

This study deals with consumption and production of
women s outerwear in Britain, drawing on the dynamic
notion of fashion , as a social process of demand
formation and as a commodifying process of
innovation and diffusion. It aims to account for
continuities and changes in consumer tastes and
producer strategies, in the context of increasing
affluence and globalisation since the 1950s.

The central argument is that the development of the
economy expanded the range of lifestyle options, in
terms of consumption, employment and conjugal
relationships, but due to the interdependent nature
of consumer preference, choices became increasingly
contagious and prone to cyclical obsolescence. This,
in turn, continued to fuel commercial competition in
the market and material abundance in the society.
Women s outerwear provides a representative case for
my inquiry into mass consumer society in twentieth-
century Britain.

Autorentext

Shinobu Majima is Associate Professor in Economic History at Gakushuin University, Tokyo, and also Associate Researcher at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change, at the University of Manchester. She was awarded a D.Phil. in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford in 2005 for her thesis on fashion.

Klappentext

This study deals with consumption and production of women's outerwear in Britain, drawing on the dynamic notion of 'fashion', as a social process of demand formation and as a commodifying process of innovation and diffusion. It aims to account for continuities and changes in consumer tastes and producer strategies, in the context of increasing affluence and globalisation since the 1950s. The central argument is that the development of the economy expanded the range of lifestyle options, in terms of consumption, employment and conjugal relationships, but due to the interdependent nature of consumer preference, choices became increasingly contagious and prone to cyclical obsolescence. This, in turn, continued to fuel commercial competition in the market and material abundance in the society. Women's outerwear provides a representative case for my inquiry into mass consumer society in twentieth-century Britain.