no man’s brand brandsinstitutionsfashion and the economy.pdfVIP

No man ’s brand – Brands, institutions, fashion and the economy Dominic Power and Atle Hauge r e s e a r c h p a p e r 2006:3 Dominic Power and Atle Hauge Department of Social and Economic Geography Uppsala University Box 513, S-75120 Uppsala Sweden Tel: +46-18-4710000 Fax: +46-18-4717418 dominic.power@kultgeog.uu.se or atle.hauge@kultgeog.uu.se “No man’s brand - Brands, institutions, fashion and the economy” Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) for their funding of the project this paper is based upon. 2 ‘No man’s brand - Brands, institutions, fashion and the economy’ Abstract Branding has become so intertwined with consumption that today’s consumers have often deeply personal relationships to brands and brand histories. Branding is an attempt to strategically ‘personify’ products and to encapsulate a balance between different economic values: quality, utility, symbolic and cultural worth. In this paper we argue that the relationship between the contemporary consumer and producer is mediated by and governed by a reflexive construction of brands. As such brands are best understood from an institutional perspective. The paper illustrates the institutional role of brand by using the example of the fashion industry. It is argued that in the fashion industry a focus on consumer-producer brand- building and bran