This issue of ZoneModa Journal is devoted to the relationship between fashion and tourism, and it aims to investigate the main similarities, divergences, influences, connections, and interactions between these two sectors.
From an academic point of view, both the fashion and tourism industries are considered a field of studies. In other words, they are two complex topics of research requiring interpretation and analytical frameworks from different and often quite distinct disciplines. Highlighting the role of the multidisciplinary approach to help read the many different social, economic, and cultural dimensions they intersect. In “tourism studies”, fashion has been mainly investigated from an urban perspective, i.e. in the relationship between the tourist attractiveness of cities and their market characterization as fashion capitals. In other words, fashion becomes a tool through which the tourism product can be diversified, or it can be a relevant topic for its contribution to the events system as a multiplier of visitor’s flows. More recently, the relevance of the role of cultural and creative industries within the social sciences, both in the process of acknowledging and developing intangible heritage and of enhancing the value of artistic and craft products, has opened up new scenarios for an interdisciplinary and intersectoral debate between tourism and fashion. In creative tourism, fashion practices broaden the concept of culture itself, allowing further analysis of the relationship between these two sectors.
In the case of fashion studies, the interest of researchers in interactions with the world of tourism has been much more restricted: studies are mainly focused on the area of marketing and management, for instance, the collaborative strategies between some high fashion brands and the hotel world.
Yet the fashion system with its creators, fashion houses, events, communication networks, and consumers has contributed and continues to contribute to the creation and definition of places, spaces, and cities; a well-defined and relevant link between fashion and the territory, which generates value in tourism practices and therefore allows an expansion of the supply. The tourism industry is itself a relevant element in the field of fashion. Since the late nineteenth century, the interaction and hybridizations in the exchanges between hosts and guests contribute (also thanks to guides, itineraries, and “must-see”) to the creation of images and imaginaries of fashion places and capitals.
This issue of ZoneModa Journal aims to encourage an innovative debate within fashion studies on the interactions between the worlds of fashion and tourism with a perspective, both theoretical and empirical, on the current transitions.
In the opening essay of this issue, Daniela Calanca offers an historical overview of the public policies implemented by the Italian State in favor of the Fashion Cultural Heritage as a possible tourist attraction. Starting from the institutionalization of the recognition of this heritage, Calanca underlines how in public policies, the link between fashion culture and tourism is concretized through the “culture of the product”. Still using the methods of historical research, Petra Kavrecic tells about the evolution of fashion in parallel with that of the habits and traditions of seaside tourism, emphasizing the role of doctors and medicine in the transformation of coastal spaces, but also of clothing habits. Changing analytical perspective and object of study, Sandra Biondo provides us with a reasoned reading of the relationship between the great fashion houses and luxury restaurants, as places at the intersection between the two worlds of enogastronomic tourism and fashion. As mentioned at the beginning, the theme of fashion and tourism has often used urban spaces as a place of analysis of the relational dynamics between the two sectors. Maria Skivko’s essay is part of this line of research: she underlines how fashion can act as a tool for the requalification of urban spaces for tourism. Returning to a historical perspective and using the national scale as the object of analysis, Vittoria Caterina Caratozzolo identifies in the quest for creativity around the exotic in fashion after the Second World War, the relationship with the theme of travel, tourism and the construction of the Italian collective imaginary of that period. Alessandra Vaccari and Paolo Franzo propose a new interpretation of Venice. Analysing it not from the tourist destination perspective, but from the relationship established between tourism and the fashion production sector in the city, they question what role fashion has in tracing new itineraries of tourist development and a new idea of the city. Finally, Ornella Cirillo traces the history of “resort fashion” that was born in Capri and Positano in the second half of the last century, underlining how the practice of tourism has given rise to new creative productions and a specific tradition. The possibility of exploring the relationship and the many reciprocal interactions between the two worlds continues in the backstage section, in which the urban realities and case studies of Florence, Naples and Pompeii are described.