Fashion is a complex social and cultural phenomenon with strong economic implications. Historical analysis reveals that the mechanisms of creating and spreading fashion have not remained constant, but have varied according to social structures, forms of producing and distributing apparel and social media, while the level of influence of fashion on society has increased in line with economic development. This special issue of Investigaciones de Historia Económica-Economic History Research is dedicated to fashion as an economic phenomenon in the contemporary period. The four articles which make it up show the plurality of the subject areas, sources and methodological approaches in the current research on this topic.

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Historical photos have significance for historical and social studies. Especially, the introduction of Geographic Information System (GIS) and digitalized historical photos have brought more opportunities and possibilities for interdisciplinary studies and the convenience for normal citizens to participate in the landscape observation. To this aim, this paper first reviews the research related to historical photos and Open GIS, and points out the meaning of historical photos for the Yunnan–Vietnam Railway (YVR). Based on the collected data of original historical photos from archives and the fieldwork data that recorded the landscape along the railway from 2018 to 2019, a WebGIS of Yunnan–Vietnam Railway is designed and implemented with open GIS tools. All the data are processed in the QGIS as vector and raster layers and loaded in PostgreSQL as relational tables. Then, heatmaps are created indicating the density of historical activities of the railway company, the other historical photographers, and current touristic activities. Connected with the PostgreSQL database, the data are uploaded to GeoServer for more GIS functionalities. Finally, the whole system lives in a webpage, implemented in HTML and JavaScript with Leaflet, and the improved functionalities of the Yunnan–Vietnam Railway WebGIS include distance measuring, search engine, and historical information browsing. In the future, further research can be done focusing on the landscape changes along the railway and public participation during the landscape observation.

Landscape quality is a crucial factor for the heritage attractiveness of tourism, allowing tourists to experience both natural and cultural aspects along railway journeys. Moreover, railway landscape is a comprehensive system that defines the landscape observed and perceived by passengers and is characterized by the diversity and continuity of the train’s movement. Yunnan-Vietnam railway (YVR) heritage is the research object of this research, whose area encompasses various landscape types and heritage sites, providing great landscape enjoyment. Currently, the assessment methods specifically for railway landscape have been discussed less than for other landscape types, especially for a series of large linear sites like the YVR. To evaluate the value of railway heritage landscape along the railway, this paper proposes a methodology combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Delphi method, and GIS as an integrated spatial assessment. Creatively, this paper seeks to: (1) discuss the relationship between railway and landscape; (2) build a comprehensive evaluation system for the railway heritage landscape, covering the topics of history, tourism, ecology, heritage, social-culture, and visual quality; (3) quantify the landscape value of the YVR areas. Thus, the results of this research can be useful to future urban planning, development, and policymaking.

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