British fashion design : rag trade or image industry?

British Fashion Design explores the tensions between fashion as art form, and the demands of a ruthlessly commercial industry.

Based on interviews and research conducted over a number of years, Angela McRobbie charts the flow of art school fashion graduates into the industry; their attempts to reconcile training with practice, and their precarious position between the twin supports of the education system and the commercial sector.

Stressing the social context of cultural production, McRobbie focuses on British fashion and its graduate designers as products of youth street culture, and analyses how designers from diverse backgrounds have created a labour market for themselves, remodelling enterprise culture to suit their own careers.

Incorporating a diverse range of concerns and debates, from the art/craft distinction and the idea of the artist, to issues of education and gender issues, British Fashion Design is an original and broad-ranging study of the economic, ideological and artistic workings of a dynamic and fast-moving industry.