Expertise and legitimacy: the bureaux de style and the contemporary fashion

Abstract

This study deals with fashion trend forecasting companies, the bureaux de style, and the wide network of relationships organized by them in the fashion system, demonstrating their centrality in creating value for fashion products. Firstly, Giddens’s perspective on the modernity and the disengagement of direct experience, a vacuum which has been filled by specialized institutions, is discussed. In the fashion system, one of the most valued expertise along the chain is the knowledge of trends, which has been institutionalized through the bureaux de style in the 1960s. The main objective of this work is to analyze the role of bureaux de style in the current fashion system. To this end, the most relevant representatives were investigated to uncover the modalities and strategies of information about fashion trends – and of themselves as specialists. The documentary research involved the collection of images and text of companies of research of tendencies: Peclers, Promostyl, Carlin, DMI, View, WGSN, Use Fashion, TrendsTop, and TrendUnion. The data were analyzed with the aid of the MAXQDA software and it was based on the Grounded Theory fundamentals. The results lead to the questioning of the faith granted to these agencies. “Large” style houses are believed to hold their legitimacy because of their discourses and the circulation of specific representations, which can be seen as a branding strategy. The bureaux de style maintain and reiterate their specialist status as they continue to articulate demand, production, and consumption in fashion.