Fashion as Flexible Production: Strategies of the Lyon Silk Merchants in the Eighteenth Century

This essay examines the prerequisites and consequences of a dynamic market strategy based on the “planned and programmed” transformation of production lines and finished products. Emphasis is on the linkage between the competitive strategy centered on the annual changes of fashion, the development of sophisticated capabilities (those of designers) that were directly instrumental to that strategy, and the introduction of a flexible production machine (the Jacquard loom) at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Unlike the case of Bologna, in which the market strategies of the different stakeholders were embedded within a multi-layered relational structure aimed at social stability, the case of Lyon is an instance of a successful attempt to combine flexible manufacturing with the ability to steer consumer demand by following and also inducing transformation in taste, and ultimately turning uncertainty into a fundamental component of the merchants’ competitive strategy.