Speakers
Introduction and opening session
Andrew MacLaren, Heriot Watt University
An introduction to the conference
Andrew MacLaren is a Lecturer in Marketing and Programme Director for the MSc International Fashion Marketing course at Heriot-Watt University.
Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk, University of Leeds & The Enterprise of Culture
Entrepreneurship and Fashion: Past and Present
Professor Blaszczyk will present a short overview of the Enterprise of Culture: Enterprise of Culture: international structures and connections in the fashion industry since 1945, a three-year pan European collaborative research project funded by HERA II (Humanities in the European Research Area). Her talk will also take a glimpse at entrepreneurship in fashion, past and present.
Professor Regina Lee Blaszczyk is the Project Leader for the European Union funded research project The Enterprise of Culture. She joined the School of History, University of Leeds, as Leadership Chair in the History of Business and Society in 2013. Blaszczyk is also associate editor for the Journal of Design History and has published eight books and numerous articles on the history of design, innovation, and consumer culture. One of her recent books, The Color Revolution (MIT Press, 2012), examines the little-known history of the creative profession known as colour forecasting.
Morning session: presentations on research on fashion and entrepreneurship, including the winner of the student competition
Dr Shiona Chillas, The Enterprise of Culture and School of Management, University of St Andrews
Searching for ‘The Real McCoy’ in Scottish indigenous textiles
This talk explores the role of cultural heritage in the separate yet overlapping fields of textiles and fashion. It examines how Scottish tweed and tartan is used to create product for the fashion industry. In doing so, it explores how material elements of the textiles, from the land that sustains wool production, the knowledge, practices, the material qualities of the production process, and the physical qualities of the resultant cloths, intertwine with images of ‘Scottishness’ and fashion aesthetics. The talk draws on qualitative interviews with relevant actors in the textiles and fashion industries. ‘Scottishness’ and the notion of authenticity offers an interesting perspective on cultural capital in aesthetic markets. The symbolic elements of Scottish identity bestow an economic advantage whilst simultaneously producing a constraint on creativity. Searching for ‘the real McCoy’ is thus portrayed as a struggle between tradition and innovation.
Dr Shiona Chillas is Lecturer in Management in the School of Management, University of St Andrews, and a Project Member with the Enterprise of Culture. Her research interests are in skills acquisition and deployment and the creative industries. Based in the Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, she is project member on the Enterprise of Culture project with Barbara Townley (PI) and Mindy Grewar. She has published in Organization, Employee Relations and New Technology, Work and Employment. The paper upon which this talk is based, ‘Searching for ‘The Real McCoy’ in Scottish indigenous textiles’, is co-authored by Shiona Chillas, Mindy Grewar and Barbara Townley at the University of St Andrews.
Amy Johnson, Manchester School of Art
Stereotyping culture: how our personal style dictates social perception
Amy's talk considers social perceptions and stereotypes, and will discuss the impact of media on first impressions and personal style from the 1960's to now, and how it affects our socialisation with others.
Amy Johnson is a final year Fashion student at the Manchester School of Art, where she specialises in using embroidery for garments. She uses her sense of humour to blend quirky narratives with print to produce unique yet comfortable and wearable pieces. As well as this, she is a keen reader and researcher not only for her Fashion degree, but also for her dissertation where she discussed the impact of first impressions and how our personal style can affect what we think of others. Amy is the winner of a recent Enterprise of Culture competition to find the best undergraduate student research on entrepreneurship in fashion.
Afternoon session: presentations from academics and curators on fashion and entrepreneurship, followed by question and answer
Danielle Sprecher, School of History, University of Leeds & Freelance Curator
A good fit? The collaboration between fashion designer Hardy Amies and Leeds multiple tailors Hepworths, 1960-1980
In 1960, couturier to the Queen, Hardy Amies, became consultant designer to the high street tailor and menswear retailer Hepworths. The risk Hepworths took on this unique and innovative partnership brought designer menswear to the British mass market for the first time and launched Hardy Amies as an international branded designer. Exploring this relationship highlights issues around creativity and entrepreneurship in fashion history. The company was founded by Joseph Hepworth in Leeds in 1864 as a tailor under the name of Joseph Hepworth & Son. It grew to become the United Kingdom's largest clothing manufacturer and went on to become Next plc.
Danielle Sprecher is in her fourth year of an AHRC funded collaborative doctoral award looking at the Leeds tailoring and menswear industry with Leeds Museums and Galleries and the University of Leeds. Before beginning her PhD, she worked in the museum sector as a curator.
Dr Patsy Perry, University of Manchester & Dr Kathryn Waite, Heriot-Watt University
The application of gestural interactivity technology to small and medium sized online fashion retailers
This talk considers a recent project which used action research to test and refine new technology in an industry setting, as a means of countering the high rates of online returns, high online basket abandonment and low conversion rates that characterise online fashion retail. A major challenge to online sales is the ability of customers to touch and feel the fabric of products. New technology allows users to digitally evaluate and interact with products using the same gestures they would in a physical store setting, such as pinching, scrunching and stroking fabric. Dr Patsy Perry and Dr Kathryn Waite report on the responses of small to medium sized fashion retail brand owners to deploying this relatively untried form of digital innovation within their online businesses.
Dr Patsy Perry is a Lecturer in Fashion Marketing at The University of Manchester. She gained her PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility in Garment Supply Chains from Heriot-Watt University in 2012. She is currently running an ESRC-funded knowledge exchange project with colleagues from Heriot-Watt University and a number of SME (small and medium sized) fashion retailers in the UK. The project seeks to address the challenge of the lack of tactile input which currently characterises online fashion shopping by utilising a novel form of image interactivity technology for mobile devices (www.shoogleit.com). This paper is co-authored by Dr Patsy Perry (The University of Manchester), Dr Kathryn Waite (Heriot-Watt University), Dr Marta Blazquez-Cano (The University of Manchester) and Dr Stefano Padilla (Heriot-Watt University)
Cher Potter, V&A London
'Collecting the New': employing the methodologies of fashion forecasting to enhance the entrepreneurial strategies of museums
Cher Potter is Senior Research Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum and University of the Arts London. She consults for design firms and lecturers at University of the Arts and the Architectural Association as well as organising the London-based arts salon Alterfutures - a group of invited artists, designers, film-makers and scientists interested in crafting visions of the future. She curated the 23rd edition of the Impakt Media Arts Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands which examined the concept of 'postwestern' arts and design. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Barbican’s Future Beauty hardcover and Tank Magazine. She is currently compiling a special edition journal on ‘Design and Futures’ and developing a pan-African network investigating post-industrial design trends.
Sharon Bainbridge, Leeds College of Art
From Fibre to Fabric: can the industrial entrepreneurs of the past inspire new enterprising designers?
The dark satanic mills ‘Up North’ manufacturing cotton in Manchester and wool, worsted and silk in Yorkshire were the power houses of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those famous cloth magnates such as Titus Salt and Samuel Lister were developing and patenting new processes regularly and conducting business on a worldwide scale. In 2013 Leeds College of Art was approached to work with SIL Industries, a Bradford company that still manufactures locally all processes in fibre and cloth manufacture. The aim was to create an exhibition in the celebrated luxury retail arcade the Victoria Quarter, in Leeds for Wool Week in October 2013. The paper explores how students’ engagement with the company, the workers and the cloth not only created a highly acclaimed exhibition of work but developed a stronger understanding of enterprise, value and the narrative around cloth.
Sharon Bainbridge is the Course Leader for Short Courses at Leeds College of Art, Sharon studied Law, after graduating she worked in Europe and headhunting in the UK. Her current role involves the management and leadership of the institutions short course programme, generating income, increased utilisation of the facilities and building an effective team of tutors and technicians that deliver a high level of teaching & learning experiences. Her research interests are looking at the collaborative possibilities and pathways between industry, museums & archives and academic institutions; and how to create strong transparent links. Sharon is the lead in the Research Cluster for Curatorial & Archive and is a Fellow of the RSA. Sharon is a PhD student with Huddersfield University researching ‘Made in Yorkshire’. In 2014 she presented at Fashion in Fiction, Hong Kong, Fashion Thinking, Kolding, Denmark and Transition Textiles, University of Huddersfield.
Roundtable discussion between academia and industry on the subject of entrepreneurship in fashion, chaired by Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson.
- Does fashion need good designers or good entrepreneurs?
- Are there unique barriers to entrepreneurial behaviour in the context of the fashion industry?
- What is the creative process of entrepreneurship?
- Is entrepreneurship in fashion born or made?
Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson, The Enterprise of Culture (Centre for Business History Stockholm)
Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson, an ethnologist and art historian, has a long experience of the international and Swedish fashion industry, having worked in French haute couture houses as well as in European fashion organizations and as Director of the Swedish Fashion Council. She is the initiator of the establishment of the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University and Senior Advisor at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm (one of the project partners for the Enterprise of Culture) where she was instrumental in the documentation of the History of H&M. She is counsellor to various cultural and business institutions, and has promoted and curated several exhibitions on dress and fashion including Ten Views of Sweden at the National Museum in Stockholm in 2005.
Anna Freemantle, Director, Edinburgh International Fashion Festival
Anna Freemantle is the Founder and Director of the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival (EIFF), a festival highlighting the intellectual element and approach to fashion and art through catwalk shows, workshops, talks and collaborative design processes. In its essence the EIFF aims to leverage the world of high-fashion to reinvent both the craft of fashion design and the textile industry that supports it; by placing emphasis on creative expression, design thinking and inclusive innovation. Going into its fourth year, the festival is at the heart of a revolution in the culture and meaning of fashion.
Tom Hendren CEO, Array Marketing
Tom Hendren is CEO at Array Marketing, one of the world’s largest designers and manufacturers of retail merchandising solutions for companies such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford and H&M. This is an innovative and globally influential fashion business that is not so much in our minds as consumers, yet they have an influence on how we shop and engage with retail environments. Tom has been with Array since 1999 and took over as Chief Executive in 2008. Tom has been instrumental in establishing Array as the merchandising partner of choice in luxury fashion retail. He is also responsible for establishing Array’s global presence including its international operations in Asia and manufacturing alliances with partners in France, the United Kingdom and Mexico. Originally Tom is from just outside Glasgow in Scotland and he enjoys his position as honorary Professor of Marketing at Heriot-Watt University, giving him a good excuse to return to his beloved home.
Colin Temple, Managing Director, Schuh
Schuh is the UK's largest footwear retailer with over 100 stores in the UK and Ireland. It is a true Scottish fashion success story, having grown organically since opening its first store in Edinburgh in 1981. Its success is attributable largely to Colin Temple and his team whose entrepreneurial spirit has seen Schuh being an innovator of new technologies and ideas in retailing. In particular, Schuh was an early adopter of online retail and retains its place as a leading player in the digital retail space whilst profitably operating such a large portfolio of 'bricks and mortar' stores. Schuh is also a multi-award-winning organisation, winning the Drapers Awards Footwear Retailer of the Year Award and The Scottish Fashion Awards Retailer of the Year Award in 2013 among many others over the years. Colin has been with the company since the 1980s and has steered it towards the key position it now occupies. Despite being at the helm of the country's largest footwear retailer, amazingly, Colin still makes time to say hello in person to every single employee at the company's head offices and mammoth distribution centres in Livingston every single day! if you would like to know more, visit their website at: http://www.schuh.co.uk/
Professor Laura Galloway, School of Management and Languages, Heriot-Watt University
Laura is Professor of Business and Enterprise and Dean of Humanities and Social Science at Heriot-Watt University. She has a background in entrepreneurship, small firms and leadership research and teaching. Much of Laura’s research focuses on peripherality both regionally and demographically, including examination of minority entrepreneurship; the role of enterprise in reducing social and economic barriers; the use and impact of ICT in small firms; and entrepreneurship education. Additionally, she pursues research on leadership, particularly in the context of value generation in organisations.
Professor Alan McKinlay, Newcastle University and The Enterprise of Culture
Alan McKinlay at Newcastle University is an expert on work practices in twentieth-century European and American industry. He has published eight books, including an edited volume on Creative Labour: Working in the Creative Industries (2009). Alan has used the work of Michel Foucault to analyze corporate strategy and industrial relations in the automobile, communications, and computer industries. His recent work has focused on two areas: the history and contemporary experience of employers‘ organizations, and the role of industrial psychology in contemporary management practice. Scholarly expertise of this type has rarely, if ever, been applied to the study of the fashion business. For The Enterprise of Culture, Professor McKinlay’s research focuses on the idea of translation in the contemporary fashion business, developing case studies of George Davies, the designer-retailer who headed the Next chain in the 1980s and later launched the Per Una brand for Marks and Spencer, and of Mosaic, one of the leading global consumer classification systems.