Labouring up and down Prisunic’s styling streams: The creative studio of a retail chain in 1960s France

This article looks at the French retail chain Prisunic’s fashion production in the 1960s and, in particular, at the collective and invisible labour of its creative studio established in 1953. It examines the processes by which Prisunic evolved from selling clothes, infamous for their shabbiness, to selling fashion during the 1960s. First, this article focuses on the organization of Prisunic. Second, it turns to the interactions between Prisunic as a fashion producer and cultural intermediaries such as forecasting agencies. Specifically, it analyses how Maïmé Arnodin’s ‘colour books’ became instrumental to Prisunic’s design process. Third, it considers the diversity of occupations within the studio, including stylist, fashion designer, fashion photographer, graphic designer and typographer, and considers their interactions. Fourth, the article delves into the interpersonal relations of studio members with fashion journalists and editors, as well as structural interactions between fashion producers and fashion media. Especially, it questions the role of French Elle in the visual and discursive construction of Prisunic’s commodities as the product of creative labour. The article draws on sociologist Michel Callon’s focus on ‘agencies’ and ‘material devices’, which are instrumental in shaping markets and the cultural economy. Further, it builds on sociologist Liz McFall’s characterization of material devices as shaped by the interaction of institutional, organizational and technological arrangements to analyse the studio’s labour practices within Prisunic, upstream with its suppliers and downstream with the press. This article traces the processes, interactions and arrangements that make up Prisunic’s styling streams.

Artists as cultural intermediaries? Remediating practices of production and consumption

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss findings from an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded research project into the heritage culture of British folk tales. The project investigated how such archival source material might be made relevant to contemporary audience via processes of artistic remediation. The research considered artists as “cultural intermediaries”, i.e. as actors occupying the conceptual space between production and consumption in an artistic process.Design/methodology/approachInterview data is drawn from a range of 1‐2‐1 and group interviews with the artists. These interviews took place throughout the duration of the project.FindingsWhen artists are engaged in a process of remediation which has a distinct arts marketing/audience development focus, they begin to intermediate between themselves and the audience/consumer. Artist perceptions of their role as “professionals of qualification” is determined by the subjective disposition required by the market context in operation at the time (in the case of this project, as commissioned artists working to a brief). Artists’ ability (and indeed willingness) to engage in this process is to a great extent proscribed by their “sense-of-self-as-artist” and an engagement with Romantic ideas of artistic autonomy.Originality/valueA consideration of the relationship between cultural intermediation and both cultural policy and arts marketing. The artist-as-intermediary role, undertaking creative processes to mediate how goods are perceived by others, enables value-adding processes to be undertaken at the point of remediation, rather than at the stage of intermediation.

Got to be real: An investigation into the co-fabrication of authenticity by fashion companies and digital influencers

This article investigates how fashion companies build their relationships with digital influencers (DIs), a new group of cultural intermediaries who are increasingly central to brand communication strategies. Scholars have mostly studied DIs’ role in influencing the market, but largely neglected the process through which they build their work. Through a qualitative inductive research directed at 21 Italian fashion companies, we describe the process through which companies fabricate the authenticity work, while collaborating with DIs. By taking the overlooked perspective of the company brand owner, we identify the underlying dynamics of achieving co-fabricated authenticity, unpacking the mechanisms through which companies select DIs, shape the connections and regulate the reciprocity with them. Our findings highlight how companies and DIs’ practices become intertwined, with the commodity of authenticity being constructed at the crossroads between the former’s commercial needs and the latter’s grassroots narratives and practices. ‘Co-fabricated authenticity’ ultimately emerges as the result of the work of those actors who are engaged in managing the authenticity or processes of authentication of marketable goods: the intangible and ephemeral value of authenticity is made tangible and co-produced through the collaboration between brands and cultural intermediaries such as DIs.

From the Train Yard to the Auction House Connecting the Graffiti Subculture to the Art Market

Various cultural intermediaries have become involved in connecting graffiti writing to the art market. Through this case study, I shed light on the division of intermediation labour in the commercialization process of artworks stemming from subcultures in a global art market. Since the early 1970s, an international network of cultural brokers has gradually been set up in a frontier zone between art collectors and graffiti writers. Interviews, documentary sources and participative observation as an insider made it possible to identify these intermediaries and their specific roles and resources. My investigation sheds light on three historical phases of intermediation: from the first initiatives in New York in the 1970s to thematic auctions in French between 2006 and 2017. The first two phases ended in commercial and critical failure, first in American galleries and then in European museums, but the third phase led to economic success on the secondary art market, followed by public institutions’ validation. Three types of intermediaries are distinguished: commissioned experts from graffiti subculture, who select and encourage graffiti writers to produce marketable works; entrepreneurs, who seek to create a niche in the art market and promote a flattering image of graffiti art collectors, a group to which they often also belong; established auctioneers, who mobilize influential art buyers and encourage their favourable reception of graffiti artworks in order to expand their business. Whether they collaborate or compete with each other, these cultural intermediaries have complementary roles and resources linked to their social trajectories. However, they reap unequal benefits from their activities, whose impact on subcultural practices is finally discussed.

In-and-Out: How Fashion Journalists Write About Black NBA Dandies

The National Basketball Association (NBA), now flush with lucrative television contracts from its broadcast partners and an owner-friendly collective bargaining agreement, is as popular as ever. Besides athleticism only reserved for a small portion of humans and basketball plays that can only be made by not even most elite college players, what also keeps fans on the edge of their seats are the outfits worn by Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Lebron James and the many other fashionable players. Using what Bourdieu’s (1984) termed cultural intermediary in Distinction as a conceptual framework, this study will examine how 12 fashion journalists write about Black NBA dandies. According to Bourdieu (1984), cultural intermediaries are involved in the presentation and representation of cultural and symbolic goods and services, some of whom are salespeople, advertising executives, and interior designers. Cultural intermediaries serve as the link between production and consumption, giving the end consumer access to legitimate culture. As fashion journalists, these participants educate their readers on the latest in bespoke wear, haute couture clothing and Black style. The Black NBA body provides a medium for fashion journalists to highlight the exclusivity and democratic ideals of fashion because of the ways in which they peel off the layers of celebrity, position Black NBA dandies within a network of images, and create a dialectic tension between Black culture and a generic White culture.

Researching tribute bands: tools, counter-interpretations and extending research relations to Facebook in a tight network

This article discusses methodological, ethical, and epistemological issues that arise when research is conducted in a tight-knit network of respondents: in this case, artists in search of fame and recognition, while performing in a tribute band – a relatively downgraded form of music. The study was conducted in Switzerland and used qualitative methodology, consisting mainly of observations of concerts and semi-structured interviews with musicians, cultural intermediaries and audience members. With an aim to contribute to the reflexivity of sociology as a discipline and ideally provide methodological traces for future research in similar conditions, the article first presents the general methodology used in this study. Then, the discussion turns to the uses and difficulties of certain methodological elements such as Howard Becker’s advice on ‘playing dumb’ for obtaining more subtle information, dealing with ‘counter-interpretations’ by study participants, or the extension of research relations to the online realm.

Hiding in Delight: Transgression, Irony And the Edge of Vice

This study examines a Montreal-based underground magazine and its use of "edge" as a strategy of retaining subcultural capital and limiting its readership, thus creating a narrow but profitable niche market that extends Thomas Frank's work on rebel consumption. Vice, through its content, tone and business strategies, unites a series of diverse but related issues including subculture, transgression, cultural intermediaries, the political economy of magazines, the audience commodity, the politics of pleasure and how media texts constitute audiences as consuming subjects. Through a combination of interlocking discursive and aesthetic strategies that involve transgression and irony, Vice is able to minimize aspects of the audience commodity as described by Dallas Smythe while foregrounding its subcultural capital. In this way, it is able to convert subcultural capital into economic capital while remaining a relevant and authentic underground publication.

Hiding in Delight: Transgression, Irony And the Edge of Vice

This study examines a Montreal-based underground magazine and its use of "edge" as a strategy of retaining subcultural capital and limiting its readership, thus creating a narrow but profitable niche market that extends Thomas Frank's work on rebel consumption. Vice, through its content, tone and business strategies, unites a series of diverse but related issues including subculture, transgression, cultural intermediaries, the political economy of magazines, the audience commodity, the politics of pleasure and how media texts constitute audiences as consuming subjects. Through a combination of interlocking discursive and aesthetic strategies that involve transgression and irony, Vice is able to minimize aspects of the audience commodity as described by Dallas Smythe while foregrounding its subcultural capital. In this way, it is able to convert subcultural capital into economic capital while remaining a relevant and authentic underground publication.