Social media have altered the communication landscape and significantly impacted on marketing communication. Research suggests that with the rise of social media, marketing communication has been democratised, and the power has shifted from those in marketing to the individuals and communities that create and consume content on social media and redistribute it across a variety of channels. Yet the implications of social media are still largely unknown among practitioners and managers. Interest in the use of social media in marketing is growing. In particular with the recent special issues on social media published by marketing journals, the body of research is rapidly developing. But despite the growing interest, there are no specific theories that focus on social-media marketing in the fashion industry, and limited empirical research exists on the implications of social media in the fashion sector overall. Research in this area has the potential to inform both further study and practice in relation to the use of social media in fashion-marketing communications. This study explores the development, implications and impact of social media as a part of marketing communications in the fashion industry through case studies and key-informant interviews. In particular, the aim is to build an empirically grounded framework that enables the understanding, explanation and description of the process of building a social-media strategy. The findings arising from this research can help practitioners and managers to make sense of the social-media environment and better understand how to design social-media activities and effectively use social media in marketing communications. As the field is emerging, the methodologies, theories and their application are likely to evolve considerably.

Due to the considerable impact of Orientalism in the 1990s, Chinese tropes began to be widely deployed in global luxury fashion brand collections. In the late twentieth century, following the success of ‘China style’ effects, the use of Chinese tropes was a dominant trend in emerging luxury Chinese branding practices. The deployment of Chinese tropes as representations of nationality in brand design has generated vigorous debate about the effectiveness of cultural translation. Edward Said (1994) has termed such an ideological ‘East’ as ‘Orientalism’ and claims that the Orient is ‘an integral part of European material civilisation and culture’ (Said, 1994, p.2). This phenomenon of the Chinese trope design continues to leave a visible mark in brand communications in the twenty-­‐first century. This research investigates the ways in which emerging luxury Chinese lifestyle fashion brands make use of Chinese tropes, symbols, and metaphors in branding practices within the context of the cultural, social, political, and economic changes in China from 1994 to 2014. This study attempts to construct visual taxonomies to examine the cultural expression of Chinese tropes in the material culture of China, generating a visual archive of Chinese identity interpretation. The study also draws upon multiple case studies of emerging luxury Chinese lifestyle fashion brands to investigate the ramifications and the perceived limitations of the practice of Chinese trope deployment and their relationship to a shift in Chinese identity caused by changing lifestyles. The thesis also challenges the notion of authenticity of ‘Chinese brand’ and ‘Made in China’ and highlights the need to redefine the assessment criteria of ‘country of origin’ for global luxury branding practices in the future.

The purpose of this research is to identify the resources and capabilities utilised for brand development and internationalisation of entrepreneurial womenswear designer fashion enterprises (DFEs). Tis thesis presents an original contribution to knowledge by using the concept of dynamic capabilities as a ‘lens’ to explore the creation of brand identity in the context of the international fashion system. In the pursuit of its aim, this research defines a dynamic capability process of DFE brand development through the codifcation of elements of brand identity, recognising the infuence of co-creation experiences. Furthermore, this thesis identifies the characteristics of DFE internationalisation behaviour, defining how the processes of brand development and internationalisation are related to each other and embedded in the capabilities of the DFE. Entrepreneurial DFEs, recognised within the fashion media as ‘emerging designers’, are increasingly identified as key sectors for economic growth. These enterprises are largely wholesale, highly internationalised operations within the SME sector, strengthened and supported by a broad network. However, signifcant focus within academic literature centres on branding or internationalisation in relation to fashion retail or established luxury firms, ignoring entrepreneurial DFEs who are sources of innovation and creativity for the fashion industry. This research fills a gap in the academic literature by examining the brand development and internationalisation processes of entrepreneurial DFEs operating in the contemporary context of the global fashion industry. Using grounded theory to examine the practice of entrepreneurial DFEs based in London and New York, this research incorporates theoretical sampling to direct data gathering from semi-structured in-depth interviews, observation at London, New York and Paris fashion weeks, and analysis of websites, social media and press. Constant comparative analysis refined emerged concepts into sub-categories, properties and dimensions surrounding the core category of the ‘collection lifecycle’. The findings of this research are organised according to aggregate dimensions of brand identity elements, and a hierarchy of operational routines, dynamic capabilities and organisational learning. This research finds that for DFEs, the development of brand identity is a dynamic capability process embedded in and emergent from operational routines and capabilities. As a resource, the brand guides internationalisation. In turn, internationalisation behaviour requires interaction within the global fashion system that operates as a source for organisational learning, further adapting the DFE’s brand to align with market opportunities. In the explanation of this process, this research presents a theoretical framework and a series of eight propositions defining the product development activities, operational resources and capabilities, dynamic brand development capabilities and process of organisational learning that impacts brand identity creation and internationalisation.

This research explores the shopping cultures of the 1930s West End, arguing for the recognition of this as a significant moment within consumption history, hitherto overlooked in favour of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining in a new way studies of shopping routes and networks, retail architecture, spectacle, consumer types and consumption practices. The study first establishes the importance of shopping geographies in understanding the character of the 1930s West End. It positions this shopping hub within local, national and international networks. It also examines the gender and class-differentiated shopping routes within the West End, looking at how the rise of new consumer cultures during the period reconfigured this geography. In the second section, a case study of two new Modern shops, Simpson Piccadilly and Peter Jones, provides the focus for a discussion of retail buildings. Architecture is presented as an important way in which the West End was transformed and modernity articulated. Modernism was a significant arrival in the West End's retail sector: it provided a new architectural approach with a close, if often problematic, relationship with shopping. The study thus reassesses common assumptions about the fundamental irreconcilability of modernism with consumption, femininity and spectacle. The third section makes a more detailed examination of the staging of shopping cultures within the West End street, looking at window display, the application of light and decoration to facades, and participation in pageantry. The study thus revisits retail spectacle, an important strand within histories of shopping and of the urban, looking at how established strategies were adapted and developed to stage modernity, emerging consumer cultures and the West End itself during the 1930s.