Consuming Canada: How fashion firms leverage the landscape to create and communicate brand identities, distinction and values

Abstract

In the increasingly global and competitive fashion industry, firms are adopting a variety of strategies to generate value and brand loyalty. While some emphasise the quality of material elements such as inputs, local production and design, others focus on immaterial aspects such symbolic value and exclusivity. In recent years, place-branding has become an important way to create connections between people, places, and products. Yet, the processes behind this type of branding remain poorly understood. In particular, limited attention has been paid to the ways in which landscapes -in all their forms -are being incorporated into place-branding practices. Drawing on 87 interviews, participant observation and an innovative analysis of Instagram accounts, this paper examines how a range of Canadian fashion firms leverage the landscape to create and communicate brand identities, distinction and values. It demonstrates how firms of different sizes and scales construct, harness, or reimagine landscapes and/or popular stereotypes to connect with Canadian identities and consumers. It also highlights how landscape-centric branding can be combined with broader value creation strategies such as local production. In so doing, this paper brings together the economic geography literature on place branding and the cultural geography literature on landscape and identity, and makes a methodological contribution to nascent examinations of social media and visual data sources in geography.

Geographies of Fashion and Style: Setting the Scene

“…Geographers are increasingly applying creative methodologies to apprehend the intersecting scales of fashion, from "getting close to clothes" (Bide 2019) to using Lego to restage and think through difficult conversations and exchanges associated with the catastrophic Rana Plaza garment complex collapse in April 2013 (Cook et al 2018). Most recently geographers have been at the forefront of rethinking the fashion city and fashion's connection to the urban (Bide 2020;Gilbert and Casadei 2020) and are also beginning to think through the ways austerity (Gilbert 2017;Hall and Jayne 2016), the internet (Brydges and Hracs 2018;Luvaas 2018) and Covid-19 (Brydges and Hanlon 2020;Lawreniuk 2020) are transforming the fashion industry and consumers. The overlapping temporalities and terrains-earthly, industrial and atmospheric-evinced through these various geographies à la mode, are testament to the pertinence of a geographic perspective on, and practices with, fashion and style.…”

Fashion City or Museum of Fashion? Exploring the Mutually Beneficial Relationship between London’s Fashion Industry and Fashion Exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum

“…Many of these have focused on two key questions; what makes a fashion city in the contemporary period (Breward and Gilbert 2006;McRobbie 1998), and how do fashion cities give a competitive advantage to businesses operating within them (Rantisi 2004). These studies look at a variety of global locations and across different tiers of fashion cities, but have generally maintained a tight focus on how fashion brands and industry bodies, such as national fashion councils, produce or maintain the value and status of the fashion city in question (Brydges and Hracs 2018;Martínez 2007), for example through the staging of events such as fashion weeks and trade fairs (Lavanga 2018) or in the sharing of skills and ideas through agglomerations (Moon 2009). Although these studies give important insights into the workings of different fashion cities, their relatively narrow focus on the primary activities of making, selling, and promoting fashions neglects other networks, spaces, and institutions that contribute to the production of symbolic status in fashion cities.…”

The student as customer and quality in higher education

“…To maintain strong brand presence and reputation companies deliver value to customers or through the various product lines they carry that consumers may or may not associate with the company. Among many other things, brands communicate value, expectations, and benefits to and for the consumer (Brydges & Hracs 2018;Choi, Ko & Kim 2016).…”