Catwalking the Nation: Challenges and Possibilities in the Case of the Danish Fashion Industry

Abstract

This article discusses the mobilization of the nation for fashion, based on how the relationship between fashion and nation unfolds in the case of fashion design practice and the fashion industry in Denmark. The otherwise globalized fashion industry is equally involved in what I term “catwalking the nation,” both as a way to construct a cosmopolitan nationalist discourse for the post-industrial nation and as a strategy for local fashion industries to promote collective identity in order to strengthen potential market share, which is the focus of this article. What may at first appear in the Danish case as an absurd and non-productive relationship is actually significant, I would argue, despite its complexity. It has the potential to stimulate critical fashion design practice and give fashion designers a voice, allowing them to take an active part in contemporary public debates on important issues such as nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the age of globalization

The Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Cold War Context: Finnish Fashion Models and National Fantasies of International Success

“…One of them is the growing economic importance of the fashion industry. Today, models are the carriers of hope for national economic success, as well as for personal success (McRobbie 1998;Riegels Melchior 2011). Moreover, fashion production directed at young female consumers has emphasized the particular significance of young women as consumers and wage earners.…”

“…In addition to the theoretical discussion of the notion of cosmopolitanism, I situate my article in the recent discussions of fashion and nationality, on how fashion organizes social structure and space and endows The Cosmopolitan Imagination in the Cold War Context certain places with an air of modernity and cosmopolitanism, and how constraints and opportunities have shaped the fashion trajectories of small European countries (Da Costa Soares 2011;de Cléir 2011;Riegels Melchior 2011;Sigurjó nsdó ttir 2011;Skov 2011: 138;Teunissen 2011). In her article on Scandinavian countries as fashion countries, Marie Riegels Melchior (2011) cuts Finland out on the geographical grounds of not belonging to the Scandinavian Peninsula.…”