Abstract
How do unconventional innovations become accepted in creative industries? To uncover the process by which conventions changed in the field of Indian fashion, we analysed the content of all 586 articles on fashion published in India’s leading fashion magazine during a 20-year period. The results of this exploratory analysis indicate that a regulatory change triggered economic liberalization in India, and the resultant globalizing forces facilitated interdiscursivity in the fashion media. As a result, the conventions of the global fashion paradigm permeated the Indian media discourse, gained acceptance, and came to co-exist with the previous “local” model of fashion and its conventions. This process increased the visibility of innovations that were previously peripheral in the field. The findings offer initial insights into the processes of change in creative industries, which are characterized as being relatively difficult to alter. The results have implications for organizational research in the areas of creative industries and innovation.
When designer Paul Poiret introduced a simple “shift” dress in late 19th-century Paris—a society in which corsets and bustles were de rigeur—his innovation was initially met with resistance. Eventually, however, conventions regarding appropriate women’s clothing began to change and shift dresses were acceptable attire by 1910. Similar instances of the slow acceptance of innovative creative products have occurred throughout history; for example, audiences and critics were slow to accept both Impressionism (White & White, 1993) and hip-hop (Charnas, 2010; Watkins, 2005). These examples raise the following question: Within creative industries, how do once-marginal innovations eventually gain acceptance? In this study, we add to the body of research that addresses this question by drawing from the literatures on creative industries, cultural production, and media studies to examine a specific process by which innovations in creative industries can become accepted as conventional.
Becker (1982) defined conventions as shared understandings of the way things should be done in a particular art world. Conventions influence all decisions regarding the creation of art works, dictating the form and material used as well as the conceptualization and abstraction of ideas in the work. Thus, the conventions of a given art world define the attributes that signal quality and, in turn, symbolic and economic value. While artists are not entirely constrained by conventions and can do things differently (i.e., unconventionally), they must be prepared to dedicate increased effort and accept a smaller, or possibly non-existent, audience/customer base in exchange for embracing unconventional subjects or methods. Innovators who violate conventions—“mavericks” (Becker, 1982)—are likely to face a hostile reception, at least initially. However, as the prior examples illustrate, innovators and innovations, which challenge conventions, may nevertheless gain acceptance in time, although this process may be slow (Crane, 1972).
To explore how conventions change in such a way as to render innovations visible and accepted, we studied the media discourse related to fashion in the Indian context. We used data from the first 20 years of the high-end fashion industry in India, specifically articles from Femina, the only fashion magazine in the country that was published for the entire time period. We analysed the content of all 586 articles on fashion published in the magazine between 1985 and 2005. We focused on fashion for three reasons. First, fashion goods have high symbolic content and value (Hirsch, 1972), and therefore the industry is similar to an art world in that it is embedded in a field of entities that construct the value of fashion items. Second, media outlets (i.e., fashion magazines) and the fashion writers who write for these magazines play a central role in the field (Crane & Bovone, 2006; Thompson & Haytko, 1997; Khaire, 2014) by analysing, evaluating, and clarifying the symbolic content, quality, and value of fashion goods for consumers (Loschek, 2009; Mora, 2006). Third, scholars have established that fashion systems are indeed governed by conventions that determine the quality and value of fashion clothing (Loschek, 2009). As Loschek stated, “[In fashion] the new is not simply the other, it is the valuable other, which has been judged valuable enough to be kept, investigated, commented [upon] and criticized” (Loschek, 2009, p. 94; italics added). In fact, fashion can be viewed as a system in which change occurs against a backdrop of order (Aspers & Godart, 2013) that is maintained by the conventions established by the fashion field via discourse. Therefore, the fashion industry is an apposite setting for studying the process by which conventions evolve in the discourse, and in time render innovations acceptable and therefore valued.
The results indicate that the conventions in the field have shifted in such a way that an additional, new mental model of fashion—a global model—moved to the foreground. Specifically, a regulatory change allowed western firms to enter the Indian market and coincided with the adoption of western or more global mental models in Indian society. In the context of fashion media, this shift was manifest in interdiscursivity (Fairclough, 1992)—Femina borrowed frames from the western media’s discourse on fashion—which changed the conventions in the field to render previously under-represented innovations more visible and acceptable. We therefore conclude that interdiscursivity can be a part of the process by which the conventions in a field change and validate innovations.
This paper fills a gap in the literature on innovation in the creative industries by shedding light on the processes of change. Specifically and most importantly, the paper highlights a particular mechanism—interdiscursivity—by which conventions in a field may change. The findings illustrate the way in which existing entities within a field can be a locus for change in its conventions, and thus complement prior work (e.g., White & White, 1993 and more recently Khaire, 2014) that has shown the importance of new entities in the validation of innovations and facilitation of change. In addition, the findings contribute to the growing body of research on value in creative industries (e.g., Khaire & Wadhwani, 2010; Moeran & Pedersen, 2011).
Theoretical Foundations
Creative industries comprise firms that produce goods that have greater symbolic than material value (Hirsch, 1972). For example, the art, fashion, publishing, music, and film industries are all related to artistic or creative endeavors that result in goods that have substantial cultural value over and above any material value (Caves, 2000). However, the symbolic significance (and resulting economic value) of creative or artistic goods is rarely apparent to untrained consumers; therefore, within creative industries, entities beyond creators/firms and consumers—intermediaries—must construct the meaning and value of these goods to enable the smooth functioning of these industries (Bourdieu, 1983, Hirsch, 1972). These multiple entities—producers (e.g., publishers, record companies, gallery owners), intermediaries (e.g., critics and reviewers), and educational institutions—constitute a “field of cultural production” (Bourdieu, 1983, 1985).
Although fields of production are sites of constant competition over resources (Bourdieu, 1983) such as power and status, in any particular field at a given time, a significant proportion of the relevant authorities have to come to an inter-subjective agreement on the primary conventions that define value in that field (Danto, 1964; Dickie, 1971; Becker, 1982; Bourdieu, 1983) via discourse. These conventions place relatively strong constraints on artists because they do not operate in isolation, but rather are one aspect of a complex, interdependent system, embodied in equipment, materials, training, facilities of exhibition, and discursive systems of interpretation and evaluation (of the art work) (Becker, 1982). To be considered a valid member of the field and to participate in the system, relevant actors must know and understand the conventions of the field (Johnson, 1993) because a work that does not conform to these conventions will be less salient to the field’s discourse and therefore have a low level of acceptance among consumers. The existence of inter-subjective conventions that normatively define a work as art leads to a relatively slow rate of change in creative industries (e.g., Jones & Thornton, 2005; Moeran & Pedersen, 2011; Svejenova, Mazza, & Planellas, 2007). This conceptualization of creative industries, which has generated and guided so many studies of cultural production, has nevertheless left a gap in the scholarly understanding of change: namely, the framework does not raise the issue of how the conventions of a field might change to render innovations acceptable, given that these conventions are complex, interdependent, and inter-subjective among powerful actors, and therefore likely to be resistant to change.
This issue is significant because, as described above, conventions are not immutable, and innovations do become accepted if and when conventions evolve. In addition, conventions are not mandates and not all creators in a field always conform to conventions, nor are all creators in a field highly valued even if they do follow conventions. In any given field or art world, at any given time, the creators whose works possess neither cultural nor economic value fall into one of two categories: some produce works that align with the conventions of the field but do not meet its highest standards, while others are “mavericks” (Becker, 1982) who intentionally engage in “selective violations” of (art world) conventions (White & White, 1993, p. 165). The works produced by creators in the latter groups are not inherently dissident, but rather are defined as such in relation to the conventions of the field (Becker, 1982). Thus, while the works of mavericks are innovations that receive a hostile initial reception due to their unconventional nature, and therefore are difficult for audiences to understand and appreciate, this hostility can be overcome (Becker, 1982) if and when the development of a new inter-subjective consensus leads to a new set of conventions (see Cattani, Ferrani, & Allison, 2014; Cattani, Negro, & Perretti, 2008) that valorize the mavericks’ works (Becker, 1982; see also White & White, 1993), and thus render them more mainstream and acceptable. Gaining a more nuanced understanding of this process requires exploring the mechanisms by which the prevailing discourse in the field shifts to validate a new set of conventions and thus facilitate change in creative industries.
Past research has shed light on various aspects of the emergence and spread of innovations in creative industries. Many scholars (e.g., Cattani et al., 2008; Djelic & Ainamo, 1999; Jones, Maoret, Massa, & Svejenova, 2012; Jones & Massa, 2013; Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003; Sgourev, 2013) have focused on creators (individuals such as artists, chefs, architects, etc.) and producers, (e.g., the firms in the industry), demonstrating which strategies and actions enable new ideas to take root in the field and society more broadly. Other scholars (e.g., Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Cattani et al., 2014; Khaire, 2014; White & White, 1993) have examined the role of the field in validating and legitimizing innovations in creative industries. While some of the latter group of studies have examined the role of both new producers and new intermediaries in legitimizing and valorizing novel ideas and products (e.g., Khaire, 2014; White & White, 1993), others have shown that existing intermediaries can also play a critical role in rendering innovations both acceptable and legitimate (Jones, 2010; Jones & Massa, 2013; Jones et al., 2012) and awarding honors to new ideas and creativity (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008). In the latter tradition, Cattani and colleagues (2014) and Jones and colleagues (cf. Jones et al., 2012; Jones & Massa, 2013) have emphasized the important role that authoritative critics play in the process of legitimizing outsiders in the field of film and architecture, respectively.
Examining the role of existing intermediaries is theoretically important because incumbent entities that possess the status and power to shape and define conventions are typically resistant to change (Bourdieu, 1983, 1985), given their already dominant positions. However, while research has shown that existing entities do adapt, shift, and legitimize the conventions in a field (see Jones, 2010; Jones & Massa, 2013; Jones et al., 2012; Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Cattani et al., 2014; Sgourev, 2013), there have been fewer studies of the mechanisms by which conventions are introduced and eventually accepted within a field. Therefore, we build on the extant research and address this gap in the literature by examining whether and how such change may occur without the appearance of new entities within the field of cultural production. We analyse the field of Indian fashion to identify the process by which conventions in a field change when there has been no change in the set of existing, incumbent intermediaries in positions of power in the field. Specifically, we explore the role of media outlets 1 in facilitating change—through the mechanism of interdiscursivity—in the conventions of a field such that peripheral innovations gain visibility and are accepted in the field.
Prior work in the areas of cultural studies and media studies has revealed the importance of media discourse and described its mutability, respectively; these findings justify our use of the media as a data source. Media outlets such as magazines (especially in the case of music and fashion) and newspapers (especially in the case of books and films) serve as venues for the discourse of critics and reviewers, who are integral constituents of Bourdieu’s (1983, 1985) cultural fields, and are responsible for generating and reinforcing the conventions of the field. For instance, Jones (2010) described the way in which critics’ discourse determines which (attributes of) works and which creators are important, thus establishing a basis for the assessment of quality and worth. Media studies, too, have shown that (conventions embedded in) the discourse (Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993; Koopmans, 2004) shape public perceptions of legitimacy (Vaara, Tienari, & Laurila, 2006) and validity, and establish the worth of the objects and/or issues that are the subject of the discourse. In more concrete terms, the media are involved in the production of consumer beliefs (Couldry, 2003) about appropriateness (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Gamson & Scotch, 1964), and media discourse plays an important role in generating collectively understood and shared meanings (Deephouse, 2000; Fiss & Hirsch, 2005; Kennedy, 2005, 2008; McQuail, 1985; Porac, Thomas, Wilson, Paton, & Kanfer, 1995; Porac, Wade, & Pollock, 1999), endorsing innovations, and shaping how innovations are understood and accepted.
Moreover, the media are relevant to the study of how conventions change because the media are the locus of interdiscursivity—the exchange of frames between separate discursive fields (Fairclough, 1992)—which is a potential mechanism for the emergence and circulation of new conventions within a particular field. Following interdiscursivity, critics’ discourse, embodied in magazine articles, might incorporate and reflect a new dominant mental model (Boyle & Hoeschen, 2001), which in turn generates a new set of conventions that legitimize a previously peripheral innovation. Exploring interdiscursivity as a means by which the primary conventions of a field of cultural production (as reflected in the discourse in a media outlet) change and shift can improve the scholarly understanding of the process by which peripheral innovations in cultural fields become valid, visible, and acceptable.
Data and Methods
Research context
The setting for this study was the high-end fashion industry in India, which is appropriate for the reasons described above: the high symbolic content of fashion, the central role of fashion magazines in generating and maintaining broader understandings of fashion (Loschek, 2009) and its value, and the autopoietic stability 2 of the field (Loschek, 2009). Before the first fashion designers emerged in India in the mid-1980s, the country’s apparel industry was dominated by textile companies, weavers, and tailors (Tarlo, 1996). Indian women tended to wear the traditional Indian sari, five meters of unstitched cloth that was woven and printed either by hand or in large textile mills. A sari was worn with a blouse, which was usually custom-made by a tailor. Younger women wore a different kind of traditional dress—the salwar-kameez—which was also usually custom-made by tailors. A very small proportion of young women wore western-style skirts, and an even smaller proportion wore trousers (Tarlo, 1996). The Indian subcontinent has a rich tradition of creating hand-woven textiles (Chishti & Jain, 2000; Irwin & Hall, 1971; Mathur, 2002) and many types of embroidery, and these textiles and embroideries were usually incorporated in salwar-kameezes. Strong cultural norms prevented women from wearing western-style clothing at formal or festive occasions; appropriate dress for guests at a wedding, for example, was (and remains) traditional Indian attire (Khaire, 2011).
While most pioneering entrepreneurs in a new field face a legitimacy challenge (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994), this challenge was exacerbated for early designers in India; given the ubiquity of custom-made tailoring and its easy availability to individuals across all socio-economic classes, Indian designers were unable to claim, as designers in the West could, that their value proposition lay in providing women with unique, individualistic garments. One of the ways they overcame this challenge was by designing heavily embellished, traditional-style clothing that could be worn at weddings and other festive occasions and that was difficult for individual, small-scale tailors to replicate. This strategy had a dual advantage. First, women were willing to spend large sums of money for weddings, and second, the heavily embellished clothing looked opulent, which justified the high prices. An additional benefit was that the use of traditional silk textiles heavily embellished with traditional embroidery allowed designers to claim that they were helping to preserve traditional Indian skills and crafts. This claim made something as seemingly frivolous as fashion more palatable to Indian women (Khaire, 2011). Notably, although fashion itself was a new concept in the Indian context (Khaire, 2011, 2014), the innovation we analyse in the current study is not the emergence of fashion in general, but rather the emergence and eventual dominance of structurally innovative, western-style clothing created by Indian designers.
Data sources
The data for this study comprise all fashion articles published in the leading Indian women’s magazine between 1985 and 2005. The magazine, Femina, has been published in English fortnightly since 1959 by the oldest print-media company in India. It is the only magazine that has been in circulation during the entire range of the Indian fashion industry, from the early, tentative emergence of fashion designers, to the current day. During the period under study (1985–2005), Femina was the largest-circulation women’s magazine in India. Initially, the magazine covered a wide variety of topics believed to be of interest to women, including career advice, motherhood-related issues, profiles of successful women from all walks of life, and sartorial and makeup-related advice. Fashion-specific articles began to appear in the mid-1980s, and by 2005, Femina was predominantly a fashion magazine.
The use of a single magazine as a data source is appropriate and adequate for three reasons: First, because we seek to study how the dominant conventions in the field have shifted since the emergence of the field, and because Femina is the only magazine that has covered the entire course of the Indian fashion industry, no other data source is as appropriate. Further, because editors typically determine the voice and direction of magazines (Haveman & Khaire, 2004), using a single magazine facilitates the examination of the discourse over time by keeping the overall editorial policy constant (Myers, 1997). Second, fashion content was directly relevant to the subject matter of the magazine, and the emergence of a new fashion industry directly affected the magazine, so the discourse surrounding this industry played out prominently in its pages. Third, Femina was (and still is) a widely circulating English-language magazine; as a result of its wide circulation, it served as a key arbiter of the meaning and definition of fashion among consumers, and because it was published in English, it reached the upper classes, which were the target consumers for the fashion industry. Femina was thus relevant to, and responsible for, the discourse that shaped the meaning and value of fashion among producers and consumers alike, making it an ideal data source for the current study.
Method of analysis
Following prior studies of changes in media discourse (Hirsch, 1986), we analysed the content of every fashion-related article in the 480 issues of the magazine published during the period under study (1985–2005). A research assistant made notes about the overall content of each issue and recorded the total number of pages and articles in each issue; the number of advertisements; and the breakdown of advertisements by product type, especially fashion-related categories such as accessories, clothing (not high-fashion), high-end fashion, and jewelry. She also noted details about advertisements for high-end fashion.
The research assistant identified 586 fashion-specific articles and printed these articles from the magazine’s microfiche archives in Mumbai, India. While we defined high-end fashion as garments that were designed and created by individuals whose creativity was perceived as integral to the production of those garments, we used a broader lens to define relevant articles, in order to err on the side of caution. Thus, the focal articles include interviews with models who worked for fashion designers, profiles of jewelry or accessories designers, and articles on trends and street styles.
Each article was independently analysed by two trained coders. Because the poor legibility and print quality of the microfiche printouts precluded computer-aided text analysis, each coder manually counted the number of times certain terms occurred in each article. The list of focal terms was generated on the basis of our reading of both the articles in the dataset and western fashion magazines, as well as the first author’s interviews with Indian fashion designers, magazine editors, and other individuals in the fashion industry (see Table 1 for the full list of terms). A small subset of these terms (e.g., “chic,” “style,” and “fashion”) were generic fashion-related terms that served as a robustness check on whether the article referred to fashion.
List of Coding Terms Used for Generic Fashion, Local Frame, and Global Frame.
A second subset of 40 terms included local terms that denoted the conventions of the fashion field with the local context. As mentioned above, early Indian designers focused on creating heavily embellished, opulent, traditional Indian-style clothing for weddings. Furthermore, given the broader social and cultural context described previously, such designs were highlighted in the magazine’s discourse as well. Therefore, terms related to traditional Indian skills and crafts (“textile,” “embroider[y],” “embellish[ment],” “kantha” [a type of embroidery], and “zardozi” [an embellishment technique]) were common in articles that interpreted and presented fashion design as being derived from these traditional techniques and embroideries. In other words, these articles explained and valued fashion using conventions that fit into a local paradigm that focused on surface embellishments and embroidery as indicators of value and did not incorporate departures from traditional styles or yearly changes in style.
The global paradigm of fashion, in contrast, emphasized structural design innovations, seasonal trends, and silhouettes. We counted 40 terms, including “season,” “line” (designers in the West usually present a “line” of clothing at Fashion Weeks), “fit,” and “couture”—words often used to describe and represent fashion clothing in established fashion magazines in the United States (such as Vogue and W). For example, “[his] clothes are structured, and the cuts are clean,” uses a global frame to explain the value of the designed garment, because the authors focuses on “fit” and “structure” or “silhouette” rather than “embroidery” and “embellishment.” Inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa coefficient, and the reliability was acceptable at 81% (Lombard, Snyder-Duch, & Bracken, 2002). Disagreements between the two coders were typically the result of the poor legibility of the micro-fiche printouts and were resolved through discussion between the coders and the authors.
We also examined the photographs of clothing that accompanied the articles or appeared as photo spreads in the issues. The clothing was further classified as Indian, western, or fusion (“Indo-western”), and we counted the number of western-style garments attributed to Indian (western) designers or brands (Indian and fusion clothing were labeled as Indian in origin).
Change in the Indian context: issue-level analysis
The issue-level analysis, especially of advertisements, reflected the effects of a regulatory change in India. After gaining independence from British rule in 1947, the Indian government adopted a centrally planned approach to economic development with the aim of ensuring equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. 3 In 1991, the Indian economy underwent a substantial and fundamental economic liberalization (Guha, 2007), going from a closed, centrally planned economy to one that was open to the rest of the world. This change was prompted by the country’s large fiscal deficit and negligible foreign exchange reserves at the time, which were the result of years of tight government control of the economy. The new policy emphasized exports, and allowed a reciprocal opening of the economy to foreign investment and foreign firms, including foreign media in partnership with local firms.
The policy change initiated a process of globalization which, through the entry of firms and increased travel by individuals (World Bank, 2006), facilitated a drastic increase in the exchange of ideas, practices, and norms across national borders. A significant indicator of the expansion in globalization is the increase in the import of goods and services as a percentage of GDP; between 1985 and 2005, this indicator rose from 7.73% to 22.68% but, more tellingly, the average for 1985–1993 was 8.47% while the average for 1994–2005 was 15%. More broadly, during the same period, net inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) as a percentage of GDP grew significantly, from 0.046 to nearly 1, with an interim peak of 1.14 in 2001. The average net FDI in the first half of the period was one tenth of the average net FDI in the second half of the period (0.07 vs. 0.7). 4
The type and quantity of advertising in the issues of the magazine reflected these broader globalizing forces. The number and proportion of advertisements for clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and accessories increased in the latter half of the period under study, indicating a rise in consumerist attitudes. We aggregated issue-level data to the year and analysed the trends graphically. First, we confirmed that fashion-related articles increased only slightly until 1993, and then rose sharply between 1993 and 1994. The trend line indicates that, other than an unexplained sudden decline in 1998, the number of fashion-related articles rose steadily over the 20-year period.
We then analysed the advertisements for each issue of the magazine. Figure 1 shows that the proportion of clothing ads relative to the total number of advertisements spiked in 1994 after a steady rise since 1992, but then declined and remained steady thereafter. This pattern suggests that, after the regulatory change, consumerism increased, and there was a change in the patterns and items of consumption and aspiration. In addition, advertisements for designers (not reported here) first appeared in the magazine in 1993 and then increased moderately over time.
Clothing ads appearing in Femina as a proportion of total ads, 1985–2005 (indicative of rise in consumerism after regulatory change).
Moreover, the content of the ads in the magazine (i.e., the nature and type of products advertised) changed substantially. In the first half of the period under study, clothing advertisements were primarily for saris and fabric stores, while in the latter half, most of these ads were for ready-to-wear brands and department stores; the declining popularity of the sari was evidenced by the precipitous drop in the proportion of sari ads among all clothing ads, from a high of 4.2 in 1994 to a low of 0.33 in 2003. The content of jewelry ads did not change significantly over the period studied, although the number of jewelry brands (as opposed to traditional jewelers’ eponymous stores) that advertised in the magazine increased steadily over time. In contrast, the types of cosmetics in advertisements changed dramatically. In the beginning of the period, most advertisements were for simple hygiene products such as soaps, shampoos, talcum powder, and hair oil. By 1988, however, Indian brands of color cosmetics and make-up had begun advertising in the magazine. By 1993, western brands started to advertise in the magazine as well, and by 2000, advertisements of western designer perfumes appeared regularly. Finally, the kinds and brands of accessories in advertisements changed considerably over time. Initially, there were almost no advertisements for accessories, and when they began to appear, they were predominantly for watches and to a lesser extent luggage. Advertisements for handbags first appeared in the magazine in 1995, and by 2005 these included high-end western designer brands such as Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. This change in the quantity and nature of advertisements in the magazine provides evidence of globalization.
Following an analysis of ads in the magazine, we turned to feature columns in the magazine which, too, attested to changing representations and projections of fashion. Early issues were devoid of regular fashion columns, but as time progressed, such columns were introduced: “What’s In, What’s Out” appeared in 1992 (it was discontinued in 1997), “Haute Stuff” in 1998, and “Fashion News” in 1999. Each of these columns dealt with fashion by either communicating the latest trends or listing stores in which certain featured garments could be purchased. Such columns and features are a common aspect of the discourse in western fashion magazines, but were entirely absent in the pre-1993 discourse in Femina’s pages. The presence of regular features and columns on fashion is another indication of greater westernization or globalization.
Results of Article Content Analysis
Local and global paradigms
We analysed the articles in two steps; we first carefully read each article to uncover the rich details of the discourse; we then used word counts to systematically analyse the content of each article; and we finally identified trends in the paradigm or mental model of fashion that dominated the discourse. We found that the focus of the articles on fashion changed considerably over time, from framing fashion predominantly in terms of the local paradigm to framing fashion in predominantly global terms. The word count analysis attested to the rise of and eventual domination of the global model. The number of “main terms”—i.e., generic fashion terms (not shown here)—climbed only slightly through the period, peaking around 1993 and remaining steady thereafter. This pattern indicates that the extent of fashion-related content remained steady in the magazine over time.
Articles on Indian fashion contained more global terms over time (i.e., the ratio of global terms to all [global + local] terms increased consistently). As shown in Figure 2, while the global paradigm was generally subordinate to the local paradigm from 1985 to 1993, the two frames diverged thereafter as the number of global terms increased sharply in 1993. This pattern suggests that the terms referring to the conventions of the global model overtook those referring to the local model after 1993. Thus, the data suggest that the overall tenor of the fashion discourse shifted between 1993 and 1994; specifically, conventions shifted from an emphasis on the local fashion paradigm of traditional textiles and embroidery to a global model of fashion that ordained structural elements as indicators of quality and value.
Global and local frames for articles concerning fashion appearing in Femina, 1985–2005 (based on frequency of use of global terms compared to local terms, controlling for number of words per paragraphs in an average article). See Table 2 for definitions of global and local frame.
A careful reading of the articles confirmed these observations (see Tables 2 and 3). Articles published before 1992 tended to describe designers’ “fascination with,” or “great love for” Indian fabrics and embroideries. These articles included approving descriptions of Indian designers’ attempts to revive traditional crafts and techniques through their designs, as well as a profile of a western designer whose collections were “inspired by Indian crafts and colors.”
Descriptions of Local and Global frames used in Articles about Fashion Appearing in Femina, 1985–2005.
These dimensions of the respective frames can be understood as defining the conventions in the field, for they establish the material and symbolic foundations of production of fashion goods.
Examples of Local and Global Frames used in Articles about Fashion Appearing in Femina, 1985–2005.
While several articles published before 1992 (and some published in 1993 and 1994) discussed fashion shows, there was unanimous acknowledgment that these shows did not showcase clothes, but rather generated publicity for the sponsor of the show. After 1992, the western conceptions of designers and fashion were better understood, as evidenced by one article’s denigrating statement that the term designer in India often “includes bored housewives who start making clothes for their friends.” The first article about a western designer appeared in Femina in 1992. The first articles to cover the Parisian and New York fashion world were published in the early years of the 1993–2005 period. These articles indicate an increased understanding of how the fashion system works in other parts of the world. There was explicit coverage of fashion trends and collections, and most importantly, assessments of structural (rather than surface) design elements, in these articles. Early in 1994, the term “haute couture,” which is employed commonly in the fashion discourse in the West, was used for the first time in Femina.
The theme and tone of the articles changed considerably in the years after 1995. Fashion-focused articles began to use terms prevalent in the global paradigm, such as “collections,” “seasons,” and “trends.” There were attempts to distinguish “design” from embellishment, and articles that provided trend forecasts. The importance of seasons and seasonal cycles (a taken-for-granted feature of the western fashion industry that revolves around the “Autumn/Winter” and “Spring/Summer” fashion calendar) in the fashion system was stressed. Criticisms of over-embellished clothes and designers’ lack of innovation in areas other than surface embellishment began to appear. There was greater insistence on the importance of the cut, fit, and silhouette of apparel, and a concurrent expression of disappointment in Indian designers’ cuts and fits. While discussion of traditional craftsmanship and textiles was not entirely absent during this period, the linkages between Indian fashion and traditional textiles and embroidery were portrayed as more flexible.
In 2000, the Fashion Design Council of India, an industry association founded by seven designers in 1999, organized India’s first official Fashion Week. This event was heralded by Femina as an important milestone in the history of fashion in India, and portrayed as an indicator that the industry had come of age and Indian fashion was now part of the global fashion system. The articles published after the event (from 2000 to 2005) mirror fashion articles in any western fashion magazine; these articles described the clothes that designers showed in various fashion shows, explained how these clothes should be worn and what accessories should be matched with those clothes, and listed where the clothing and adornments could be purchased. The articles establish that, as in the rest of the world, silhouettes and cuts and alignment with trends and seasonality rather than traditional textiles and embroideries came to be new elements that defined high-end fashion in India.
Interdiscursivity and the arrival of the new global paradigm
To understand how the new model of fashion was incorporated into the discourse in India, we turned to the concepts of discursive fields and interdiscursivity (Fairclough, 1992). Our exploratory analysis indicates that Femina was the site of a “discursive field” (Wuthnow, 1989). The magazine began to feature articles on western fashion designers, with some photographs of their designs, in 1992 and 1993. Conducting background research for such articles likely exposed journalists in India to the terms and frames used in the fashion discourse in the West, and they probably began to incorporate those frames and values in their subsequent writing. Thus, interdiscursivity, specifically, the process of the discursive field of Indian fashion bringing in frames and terms from the field of discourse surrounding western fashion likely escalated the challenge to the prevailing (local) conventions in Indian fashion, which had begun as the result of the globalization discussed above, and facilitated the diffusion of a new (global) paradigm of Indian fashion.
We examined the focal articles to understand how interdiscursivity was manifest. We first read all articles about western designers in great detail. We then compared this content with the content of articles about Indian designers, and also compared and contrasted the descriptions of Indian design before and after 1993.
Prior to 1992, when an article on western designer Gianni Versace appeared, Femina discussed western fashion only as it related to the local paradigm. British designer Zandra Rhodes, the only western designer mentioned in this period (in 1987 and 1988), was covered largely because she had designed an “Indian Collection” of 64 “designer saris that promise to break from tradition…to suit the exotic tastes of the international jet set partial to anything extraordinary, even outlandish” that was to be shown in London, New York, New Delhi, and Bombay. The magazine emphasized Rhodes’ “love affair with India,” which began in 1981 when the Handloom and Handicrafts Export Promotion Council of India invited her to design garments from Indian fabrics, and led her to return “again and again, purely because Indian designs, concepts, and fabrics fascinated her.” Neither article on Rhodes discussed how exactly she had deconstructed or reinvented the traditional sari (although an examination of other sources shows that the Rhodes’ “sari” was nothing like a traditional one). Rather, the article emphasizes the captivating beauty of Indian textiles and revels in their prominence even in western fashion. Similarly, a 1989 article entitled “International Update” emphasized that across the world, “Indian fabrics and prints abound, and innovative uses for traditional costumes are now common.” Thus, prior to 1992, even western fashion was described and evaluated using conventions grounded in a local frame.
The 1992 article on Gianni Versace contains the first mention of structural aspects of fashion design, when it describes Versace’s “unstructured line,” and perfect “seams.” In 1993, an article about British designer Vivienne Westwood suggests that her clothes were beautifully proportioned because she understood (in the context of a particular dress) that “[a] hip emphasis would kill the big shoulder.” A 1993 article on Pierre Cardin contains the first instance of the word “silhouette” in the data. Yet another 1993 feature on a western designer described the creative process Jean-Paul Gaultier used in designing his seasonal collections. Finally, an article on designer Christian Lacroix’s “ethnically [India and Africa] inspired” collection emphasized how his clothes were structurally different than those of other designers. Notably, despite mentioning his Indian inspiration, the article does not discuss the textiles or embroideries used in the collection.
In effect, after including almost no mention of western designers from 1985 to 1992, Femina ran four articles about four separate western designers in 1993 alone, and these articles focused on global rather than local conventions. This trend continued in the following years. In 1994, for example, Italian designer Valentino was interviewed; an article on platform heels described a history of the trend, which the author attributed to designers Salvatore Ferragamo, Vivienne Westwood, and Yves St. Laurent; and two other articles focused on western designers (Tristano Onofri and Jean-Paul Gaultier). In 1995, the magazine broadened its scope by publishing two articles about the Paris fashion industry more generally, rather than individual designers. By taking an expanded, industry-level perspective (the title of one was “The Challenges and Prospects of Paris Fashion”) these articles used the global paradigm to clarify the very concept of fashion design.
The adoption of the global model of fashion also influenced and changed the specifics of the discourse about Indian designs and designers. For example, in 1991 a particular designer’s work was described as “…poetry in fabric, embroidered jackets, flowing skirt lengths, and silk bodices, complemented by gauzy wraps that create outfits that seem to flow endlessly.” Only the last segment of this description is related to the structure of the outfit, while the remaining description focuses on traditional Indian aspects such as embroidery and fabric. In 1994, the same designer’s work was described as having “beautiful, soft embroidered cut-outs, shaped to mold the body in silhouettes cut on soft biases in understated colors.” In line with the global mental model, the emphasis had shifted toward describing the cut and structure of the garment rather than the fabric and embroidery. In 1996, two separate articles explicitly criticized Indian designers’ over-reliance on traditional textiles and embroideries, and exhorted them to create innovative and original garments. One of these articles explained, “The fundamental [sic] of a good design is detailing, which is not the same as embroidery in all its types.” In 1997, a designer was lauded for her “keen eye for innovation in knit structures, use of patterns and an attractive color palette,” and another for her “well-cut silhouettes, flowing designs, and merging [of] fabrics.” Neither of these descriptions contained any mention of traditional weaves or embroidery. In 1999, Femina featured a 16-part series of articles featuring both Indian (4) and western (12) designers; the authors used the same framework to describe and analyse the creations of both Indian and western designers. By 2000, the magazine focused on Indian designers’ “clean lines, classy silhouettes, and tasteful combinations of colors, blended with precision,” and their “experimentation involving the juxtaposition of silhouettes, structures, colors, and fabrics,” while “hints of zari,” which would have received the most attention pre-1992, were described as “surface decoration.”
Notably, the conventions based in the local paradigm did not entirely dissipate. As shown in Figure 2, references to the old conventions persisted, albeit in much lower numbers. Even after 1994, some articles continued to emphasize the traditional textiles and embroideries designers used in their garments, rather than the clothes’ structure and innovativeness. The photograph data also illustrate that some Indian designers continued to design traditional-style garments using opulent textiles, heavy embroidery, and other embellishments. In sum, while references to the conventions of the local paradigm persisted after 1994, they decreased significantly, and the global paradigm, which validated the previously peripheral practice of emphasizing individuality and originality of designs, and the fit, structure, silhouette, and cut of the garment in high-fashion clothing, became dominant.
Finally, we found that the new mental model and its corresponding conventions granted greater visibility to western-style designs, which were previously under-represented in the discourse. This shift was manifest in the photographs in the magazine. The photo-spread format (Altheide, 1997) is a standard feature of fashion magazines in the West, and is a powerful visual tool that presents conventions in a particularistic manner and shapes audiences’ understandings of appropriate design and value. Before 1993, Femina’s photo spreads featured primarily Indian-style designs from Indian designers, reinforcing traditional looks and the local paradigm; after 1993, however, the magazine featured more western-style designs created by Indian designers in photographs, emphasizing the new conventions, including minimalism, structural novelty, and fit. 5
The article data illustrate an increase in the representation of less opulent, more structurally innovative designs in accordance with the global paradigm of fashion. In addition, the photograph data, while not definitive, provide suggestive evidence of the increased acceptability, through presentation in the magazine, of more modern, western-style and “Indo-western” designs 6 created by Indian designers after 1993 (see Figure 3). In the last three years of the period under study, the number of photographs of both Indian-style and western-style clothing designed by Indian designers remained fairly constant.
Proportion of Indian-style clothes and western-style clothes created by Indian designers (described in fashion articles in Femina, 1985–2005) of total articles per year.
Conclusion and Contributions
This study was motivated by the following question: What is the process by which conventions change to render innovations visible and widely accepted in creative industries? Our findings build on prior work to provide initial insights into this process. We found that the conventions in the fashion field were primarily derived from local frames when the first fashion designers emerged in India. The local frame was aligned with and reinforced the early designers’ vision of Indian fashion, which was heavily based on traditional garment styles, textiles, and embellishments. Although mentions of elements of the global frame were not entirely absent in the early period, the local frame dominated the discourse in the field; innovative designs, which did not fully align with these conventions, existed but were less visible. Structurally innovative designs of clothes that lacked embellishments were under-represented in the discourse. The trends in the discourse suggest that the regulatory change in 1991 acted as an exogenous trigger (Fiss & Zajac, 2004) that led to a dramatic increase in exposure to the global economy (indicated by the kinds and number of ads in the magazine). At around the same time, a global paradigm of fashion was introduced in the field through interdiscursivity. The conventions of this new global frame emphasized the importance of seasonal cycles (collections and shows) and structural innovations that focused on (new) silhouettes and cuts of garments as the elements of value, rather than textiles and embellishments, which were valued in the previous frame. After this point, the magazine’s textual and pictorial discourse was more heavily influenced by the new global frame, although the influence of the local frame did not entirely cease. 7 We propose that the mechanism of interdiscursivity can bring about change in the conventions in a particular field of production without requiring a simultaneous shift toward new critics.
As a result of its setting in the fashion industry, the primary contribution of the paper is to the literature on creative industries, which have begun to receive systematic attention from organizational scholars (Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000; Lampel, Shamsie, & Lant, 2006). In particular, the findings provide preliminary insights into how systemic change may be bolstered within the creative industries, which are defined by conventions that, by virtue of being interdependent and embodied in a complex system (Becker, 1982), render innovations costly (in material and symbolic terms) for artists. Our finding that interdiscursivity in the field of cultural production led to a change in the conventions of the Indian fashion field illustrates the way in which change can occur within a field without upheaval in the power structure.
Notably, although interdiscursivity was triggered by an exogenous regulatory change, the new regulations were not even remotely related to the fashion industry in India, nor did they specify the parameters of the new conventions. This possibility of change being triggered exogenously and facilitated by existing intermediaries adds to the scholarly understanding of the process by which maverick innovations can become mainstream. While prior studies have shown that intermediaries in the powerful core or center of a field may nevertheless succumb to challenges raised by peripheral actors, thus resulting in peripheral innovators becoming aligned with the core and overturning the power structure, this process occurred via network-based relationships and/or diffusion (see Cattani et al., 2014; Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Jones & Massa, 2013). To the contrary, the current findings show that the non-relational diffusion of mental models through interdiscursivity can serve as a mechanism for introducing and disseminating new mental models within a field that, in turn, allow innovators to acquire visibility and positional status in the field.
At the societal level, the finding that the local traditional model came to co-exist with a global model provides empirical support for the assertion that “cultural antinomies” (Barley & Kunda, 1992) are in play at any given time in society, manifest in industry in some way, and that these antinomies alternate in their dominance in an industry as diffusion occurs, without one model ever entirely replacing the other (Barley & Kunda, 1992; Frenkel, 2005). Relatedly, the crucial importance of the existence of plural logics or multiple mental models (i.e., multiple approved ways of doing things) in fostering innovations and change (Jones et al., 2012; Svejenova et al., 2007; Townley, 2002) was evident: the global model of fashion co-existed with the local model in the Indian fashion system at all times, although the volume of each frame and its conventions alternated. This co-existence of multiple models, in turn, has implications for our understanding of repeated cycles of change as such plurality is conducive to experimentation and diversity.
Although we examined the media rather than the innovators themselves as our data source, this paper is not at odds with previous studies of innovation in creative industries, but rather, builds on these studies to provide additional insights. Thus, for example, Rao and colleagues (2003) acknowledged the role of discourse in the broader context of French gastronomy, especially the rebellious ideas that emerged in literature and the arts at the start of the nouvelle cuisine movement. In a similar manner, we privilege the role of discourse of intermediaries, not just the creators, in the diffusion and acceptance of a new mental model and its conventions. Our focus on discourse also allows us to shed light on the interplay between language, meanings, institutions, and organizations (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005; Zilber, 2002). Finally, by studying the global mental model through the terms used by magazine writers, we have strengthened the linkages between the frames and meanings embedded in discourse (e.g., Jones & Livne-Tarandach, 2008), and organizational practices and actions.
These contributions notwithstanding, we acknowledge the limitations of this study. First, we examined only one type of entity in the field of production (i.e., the media outlet). However, given the integral role of the media in the field of fashion, we believe this focus is a justifiable first step toward gaining a full understanding of how conventions change in creative fields. Second, the quality and legibility of the articles printed from microfiche archives did not permit deeper computer-aided content analysis because the text was not optically readable and there were too many articles to permit keying in the text in a reasonable amount of time. Third, we have inferred interdiscursivity from the content of the articles as well as field interviews, rather than measuring it quantitatively. In this respect, however, we are following the standard in media studies, a field in which similar evidentiary principles are applied and accepted as a demonstration of interdiscursivity.
Interdiscursivity is a plausible mechanism of change in conventions due to the inter-linkages between public discourse in the media, industry mental models, and field-specific conventions. While future research in this area can shed more light on interdiscursivity and other possible mechanisms by which conventions in a field evolve and change, we believe that this paper has taken a first step toward elucidating the specific process by which these inter-linkages have implications for organizations and fields. The paper has also opened avenues for further study; the interplay between local and global identities and frames in industries has particular potential. We observed in the current case that innovation in the Indian fashion industry was adapted from practices in the fashion industry elsewhere in the world. Such adaptation of practices suggests the value of future research that explores in detail the determinants of which practices diffuse as well as the precise manner in which the diffusing mental models are modified and adapted to the new context. The relationship between the identity of an industry and the practices and mental models prevalent in it is also of particular interest; if an industry is defined to a large extent by its mental model, to what extent can such practices be modified without erasing the identity of the local industry? Thus, although the purview of this paper was to explain the diffusion of new mental models and conventions through a field of cultural production, the findings have implications for broader issues of identity, innovation, and institutions. Further research in this area can expand the scholarly understanding of these critical topics within the organizational literature.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the excellent research assistance of Rushda Hakim, Shonan Kothari, Aashni Pandya, and Victoria Song. We thank Mr. Kulkarni, Director of Femina Archives, and Ms. Tanya Chaitanya, Editor of Femina for enabling access to the Femina archives and data. We are also grateful to Marlena Fiol, Stine Grodal, Greta Hsu, Kate Kellogg, Michael Lounsbury, Nitin Nohria, Donald Palmer, and Mary Tripsas, as well as participants at the Davis Qualitative Research Conference, EGOS, and the West Coast Research Symposium for comments that greatly improved this paper. A very early version of the paper was presented at the 2008 Business History Conference in Milan and benefitted from feedback from the participants. Financial support from Harvard Business School’s Department of Research and Faculty Development is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are our own.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.