Welcome to the course website of the Commons iSeminar ITA 1001-01, Made-in-Italy: Identities, Cultures, and Globalization in Italian Fashion and Design
What do you know about Italian fashion and design in Italy and the United States? Which cultural aspects of an Italian brand perform well abroad and why? What happens when a family-run business in Italian-made fashion or Italian-made design has both local and global productions? Which cultural aspects of the brand perform well abroad and why? Made-in-Italy simultaneously shapes local identities and operates within a globalized transnational culture. In the struggle between local and global, on the one hand, fashion represents Italy’s identity abroad. Yet, on the other, the global market tailors fashion according to the needs of different markets overseas.
In this website, we examine how the global market makes Italian fashion and design available to foreign consumers and tailors it according to their immediate users. We investigate how iconic designs and brands have contributed to the current plethora of goods from Italy and how they have an impact on the way the country projects its quality mark in a global framework. Moreover, we analyze the reasons why a fashion brand may spread over national boundaries in order to understand the multifaceted interplay among local and transnational communities and the changing reality of a globalized culture.
- made in Italy: across the page (Brigitte Jia)
- The Gradient (Frazer Campbell)
- “Back To Our Roots” – Sustainable Fashion (Jenn Coen)
- What’s in a name? (Alyssa O’Connell)
- FILA (Emily Hurren)
- Hamburger e Spaghetti (Zixin Zhang)
- Street Style (Krista Panageas)
- Fashion Speaks (Nat Wight)