Globalization, cultural economy, and not-so-global cities: the New Zealand designer fashion industry

Research on so-called 'global cities' dominates the existing literature on globalization, fashion, and cities. In this we paper analyze the recent rise of a designer fashion industry in Auckland, New Zealand. The designer fashion industry has emerged as an unlikely success story as the New Zealand economy has globalized. Together with other creative industries, designer fashion is seen as an industry that can revamp New Zealand's international image and in doing so foster additional foreign investment. As the industry has succeeded, Auckland has disproportionately benefited, with sustained industry agglomeration and increasing infrastructural development in this city. However, the symbolic benefits of the designer fashion industry have proved more elusive. We show that the New Zealand designer fashion industry borrows symbolic capital from the global cities of designer fashion. We argue that this borrowing of symbolic capital underlines the need to think more carefully about the geographical specificity of the material, political, and symbolic processes associated with globalization and the cultural economy.