"Who is next to be thrown into the lion's den?" En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av chefsdesigners roll i ett modesystem i förändring

This paper is written by Alice Myringer and Johanna Ottosson at Lund University. The title is “Who is next to be thrown into the lion’s den?” - A qualitative content analysis of the role of the creative director in a changing fashion system. The study aims to examine how journalists describe Alexander Wang’s, Raf Simons’s, Alber Elbaz’s and Hedi Slimane’s exits from their respective fashion houses; Balenciaga, Dior, Lanvin and Saint Laurent. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether there is a connection between the four fashion designers exits and alleged structural changes in the fashion system. The paper is a qualitative content analysis where 19 editorial articles from the digital editions of Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue, The New York Times, Dazed Magazine, The Independent, The Business of Fashion and The Wall Street Journal have been analysed. The theoretical framework that has been used are Bourdieu's theories of field and capital, Kawamuras Fashion-ology and Lantz theories of the commercialization and economization that characterizes the fashion field of today. The study shows that new dominating operators have taken place in the fashion field and have made the boundaries between high and low less clear. Owners, luxury conglomerates and fast fashion companies have become important and controlling operators that have degraded the authority of the creative director. The field has become increasingly commercial and it is difficult for a designer to work as an artist, but journalists still produce their identities as creative geniuses.