The globalization of fashion brands has occurred as major fashion designer houses have expanded their product ranges and diversified into middle‐market diffusion lines. Central London has been the target for some of this development activity in the 1990s. Charts the growth of designer outlets in the UK capital with particular attention to foreign companies and their market‐entry strategies.

The focus of this paper is two‐fold. First, it examines the growth strategies adopted by fashion design houses to transform and reposition their businesses from relatively small, niche‐market and privately‐owned companies to stock market listed conglomerates which produce fashion and lifestyle products aimed at a lucrative and international middle retailing market. The second is to consider the geographical implications of these strategies as illustrated through an examination of their locational impact on London and New York. The findings of this research suggest that both cities have experienced unprecedented and parallel patterns of development, apparently as a result of the aggressive expansion activities of fashion designer companies. As such, the paper highlights the impact of internationalisation and strategic growth at the micro environmental level.

Most states worldwide possess two or three levels of government, from national to provincial and localities. Subnational governing arrangements are emerging in response to widespread decentralization, globalization, and urbanization, with this level increasingly considered the ideal spatial scale for effectively harnessing governing capacity. Yet regional governing arrangements often lack the traditional statutory and administrative governing tools of the state. Instead, they tend to rely on voluntary co-ordination and co-operation. Emboldened with more traditional governing tools, provincial and local states can work against these networks to protect their own power. This case study of Sydney, Australia, examines the dimensions of hard and soft power in a regional governing network and the role of provincial and local actors in determining the prospects for regional governance. In the absence of state-like mechanisms of hard power, the soft power on which regional governing networks rely will likely remain inferior for the governing task.