complex and relational spatialities involved in global brands

In Milan there is a variety of districts that function

principally as consumption districts tailored to different

types of consumers.celebrity red carpet dresses .

customers, and revenue, but they also help create a

vast set of shop windows that display Milan’s fashion

complexity and content. The sheer scale and scope of

shops and retailers from Italy and the rest of the world

means the city often feels like one gigantic dressed

window on the world of fashion: a window to be

looked at, but also one designed to project a multiplicity

of images outwards.

CONCLUSION

Understanding sectoral brandings of cities and howcities

can function as brand platforms for cultural industries is

important. In particular, investigating such processes can

tell one more about how the place of origin is itself often

part of commercial constructions cultural industries

weave to support their competitiveness. In the case of

Milan’s status as a fashion and design capital, four key

brand channels were identified: channels through

which the city’s brand is negotiated and communicated.

Each of these channels has its own particular form and

involves particular actors and negotiations. Thus, each

works according to a mess of countervailing organizational,

individual, and collective motivations. This

begs the question of how these four contested channels

hang together. Firstly, they hang together because

Fig. 3. Quadrilatero d’Oro

Global City Brand Channels in the Fashion and Design Industries 901

individual actors may be involved in many or all of them

simultaneously. For example, at the same time as being a

spokesman for the city,flower petal dress ,

 Armani’s firm organizes promotional

events and builds flagship stores. Secondly,

the channels are interconnected because what happens

in one channel may affect another. For example, the

effects of high-profile fashion shows may fail to convince

consumers faced by a brand that appears in shabby retail

environments. Thirdly, they hang together on a collective

level because what one actor does in a brand

channel can positively or negatively affect another. On

the positive side, there are definite advantages to channels

populated with many investors. For example, a

fashion week with fifty well-orchestrated shows is

better for everyone involved than a fashion week with

only five; or new entrants can benefit from the longterm

investments established firms have made in the

status of a particular retail milieu. On the negative

side, there is the danger that what some do in the

brand channels might not suit everyone.

These channels also share a local anchoring and a

degree of embeddedness through their grounding in

the use and appropriation of particular elements of

urban space, for example, billboards, shops on particular

streets, trade shows. Actors invest in these types of local

spatial stratagems even though their audience might be

co-present for only a short time (for example, shoppers,

trade visitors, tourists) or never even visit Milan (magazine

readers, bloggers, television viewers). Whilst many

of the brand channels are deeply rooted in the spaces of

the city, their reception, interpretation, and negotiation

may therefore happen far from the local. It is important

then to understand the complex and relational spatialities

involved in global brands such as ‘Milan Fashion and

Design’.