Marketing and Retailing Clothing and Fashion – the Long View

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Introduction

The modern fashion industry is built on successful marketing and branding, from haute couture houses to high street favourites such as M&S. Increasingly this is filtered through a historical lens as with the recent ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions at the V&A considering the haute couture houses of Dior and Chanel, bringing together high-end commerce and fashion history. 

The exponential expansion of literature exploring the history of fashion and clothing over the last thirty years has been mirrored by research into the history of retailing and consumption through social, economic and business histories over a similar timeframe. Histories of retailing often consider clothing, fashion and textiles, which form a large sector of the market as a human necessity, alongside food, but specific studies are still surprisingly rare in the field, especially those that consider a wide historical timescale, broad geographical reach and explore working and middle-class practices as well as those of the elite. This journal issue will aim to start filling this gap with a collection of articles brought together to provide a long view of clothing and fashion retailing and marketing, highlighting both the importance of this sector in marketing history and the innovations it brought to the whole field. 

This special issue of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing will therefore collate articles drawn from current research by both dress and fashion historians and retailing and marketing history scholars to produce a volume that will span both research areas and explore a broad historical sweep encompassing the origins of modern retailing and fashion systems, highlighting the importance of both fields as well as considering implications for future research. It therefore invites articles which examine this, from medieval to modern case studies as well as thematic surveys, including practices across all social classes. Topics might include but are not limited to those below.

List of Topic Areas

• advertising and branding clothing and fashion 
• retailing and retailers of clothing and fashion 
• locations for the retailing and consumption of clothing 
• consumption behaviour around clothing 
• further sites of intersection between fashion and marketing, for example, the museum ‘blockbuster’ fashion exhibition 
• working and middle-class clothing retailing and consumption practices 
• pricing and advertising strategies by clothing retailers and manufacturers 
• the commercialisation and marketing of fashion history

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see here.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”. 
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 31/03/2024 
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 31/08/2024