Abstract
This chapter elaborates a social structural perspective on creativity that aims to situate the generation and recognition of creative work within the larger social context in which creators and their audiences (peers, critics, and users) are embedded. Specifically, we argue that creativity is subject to a core-periphery network tradeoff. While peripheral actors can gain legitimacy for their creative work by moving towards the core, core actors can escape the field’s conformity pressures by moving closer to the periphery. Our strategic research material is the field of the haute couture (high-end fashion) in Paris during the 20th century. We advance the notion of optimal network structuration strategy to explain how Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, an outsider located at the margins of the French society, was consecrated as an iconic and acclaimed figure within the world of fashion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Edmonde Charles-Roux was the first biographer of Chanel (L'Irrégulière ou mon itinéraire Chanel 1974; Le Temps Chanel 1979) and she has been Vogue’s editor-in-chief from 1954 to 1970.
- 2.
Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
- 3.
Short for premieres mains, “first hands”, skilled dressmakers who translated Chanel’s vision for everyone else and realized the garments.
- 4.
Chanel was the woman that other women wanted to look like, as she was the epitome of the modern woman (Steele 1993).
- 5.
For instance, in an important theatrical production with Diaghilev, “Le Train Bleu”, she cut the hair of the ballerinas to bring her masculine style to the fore and used real casual clothes (those sold in her boutique) rather than costumes.
- 6.
The Art Deco spun off from French avant-garde movements like the Cubism and the Ballets Russes.
- 7.
The corseted silhouette moved to a narrow, relaxed, almost semi-fitted silhouette (i.e., the tubular clothing silhouette), more appropriate to women’s new lifestyle.
- 8.
It is worth noting that Chanel was the only one to close the fashion house: the couturiers of Paris went right on presenting two collections a year (Charles-Roux 2005).
- 9.
It is worth mentioning that it was more difficult for Chanel to impose her name again because after WWII she had the reputation of being a Nazi sympathizer (Steele 2009).
- 10.
Her creative trajectory is in part also the effect of exogenous changes opening up unique opportunities for change. The decade between 1910 and 1920 subverted the previous social order and introduced new mores, granting unquestionable supremacy to Chanel’s innovative designs. In fact, the growing Women Movement and, more importantly, WWI called upon women to step into new social roles for which Chanel’s fashion turned out to be more suitable. Women then became devoted to Chanel’s “modern” clothes.
- 11.
It is worth noting that the collaborations and the mutual influence between the fashion world and the prestigious Parisian art world contributed greatly to a substantial increase of the status of the fashion designers like in the case of Chanel and Schiaparelli (Crane 1993).
References
Audia, P., & Goncalo, J. A. (2007). Past success and creativity over time: A study of inventors in the hard disk drive industry. Management Science, 53(1), 1–15.
Becker, H. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Borgatti, S. P., & Everett, M. G. (1999). Models of core/periphery structures. Social Networks, 21, 375–395.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Delsaut, Y. (1975). La couturier et sa griffe: Contribution à une théorie de la magie. Actes de la recherche en sciences socials, 1(Janvier), 7–36.
Cattani, G., & Ferriani, S. (2008). A core/periphery perspective on individual creative performance: Social networks and cinematic achievements in the Hollywood film industry. Organization Science, 19(6), 824–844.
Cattani, G., Ferriani, S., & Colucci, M. (2013). Creativity and social networks: A core-periphery perspective. In C. Jones, M. Lazersen, & J. Sapsed (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the creative industries, Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
Chaney, L. (2011). Chanel: An intimate life. New York: Penguin.
Charles-Roux, E. (2005). The world of Coco Chanel: Friends, fashion, fame. London: Thames & Hudson.
Ciment, M. (2003). Kubrick: The definitive edition. New York: Faber and Faber.
Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Coser, L. (1965). Men of ideas: A sociologist’s view. New York: Free Press.
Crane, D. (1976). Reward systems in art, science, and religion. American Behavioral Scientist, 19(6), 719–734.
Crane, D. (1993). Fashion design as an occupation. Current Research on Occupations and Professions, 8, 55–73.
Crane, D. (2000). Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender, and identity in clothing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1994). The domain of creativity. In D. H. Feldman, M. Csikszentmihalyi, & H. Gardner (Eds.), Changing the world: A framework for the study of creativity. London: Praeger.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity, flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collings.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1998). Creativity and genius: A system perspective. In A. Steptoe (Ed.), Genius and the mind: Studies of creativity and temperament. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implications for a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity (pp. 313–335). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Faulkner, R. R., & Anderson, A. B. (1987). Short-term projects and emergent careers: Evidence from Hollywood. American Journal Sociology, 92, 879–909.
Ford, C. (1996). A theory of individual creative action in multiple social domains. Academy Management Review, 21, 1112–1142.
Grumbach, D. (1993). Histoires de la mode. Paris: Seuil.
Guimerà, R., Uzzi, B., Spiro, J., & Nunes Amaral, L. A. (2005). Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science, 308(5722), 697–702.
Hargadon, A. B., & Douglas, Y. (2001). When innovations meet institutions: Edison and the design of the electric light. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(3), 476–501.
Hillier, B. (1968). Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. London: Studio Vista.
Hirsch, P. M. (1972). Processing fads and fashions: An organization-set analysis of cultural industry systems. American Journal of Sociology, 11, 639–659.
Horton, R., & Simmons, S. (2007). Women who changed the world. London: Quercus.
Jick, T. D. (1979). Mixing qualitative and quantitative methods: Triangulation in action. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(4), 602–611.
Johnson, C., Dowd, T. J., & Ridgeway, C. L. (2006). Legitimacy as social process. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 53–78.
Kawamura, Y. (2005). Fashionology. An introduction to fashion studies. Oxford, New York: Berg.
Kieser, A. (1994). Why organization theory needs historical analyses-and how this should be performed. Organization Science, 5(4), 608–620.
Kraatz, M., & Moore, J. (2002). Executive migration and institutional change. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 120–143.
Leblebici, H., Salancik, G. R., Copay, A., & King, T. (1991). Institutional change and the transformation of interorganizational fields: An organizational history of the U.S. radio broadcasting industry. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(3), 333–363.
Mackrell, A. (1992). Coco chanel. London: Batsford.
Madsen, A. (2009). Coco Chanel. A biography. London: Bloomsbury.
McLaughlin, N. (1998). How to become a forgotten intellectual: Intellectual movements and the rise and fall of Erich Fromm. Sociological Forum, 13(2), 215–246.
McLaughlin, N. (2000). Revision from the margins: Fromm’s contributions to psychoanalysis. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 9, 241–247.
McLaughlin, N. (2001). Optimal marginality: Innovation and orthodoxy in Fromm’s revision of psychoanalysis. Sociological Quarterly, 42(2), 271–288.
Morand, P. (2008). The allure of chanel. London: Pushkin Press.
Morini, E. (2010). Storia della moda. XVIII–XXI secolo. Skira: Ginevra-Milano.
Perry-Smith, J. E., & Shalley, C. E. (2003). The social side of creativity: A static and dynamic social network perspective. Academy of Management Review, 28(1), 89–106.
Phillips, G. D. (2001). Stanley Kubrick. Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Rennolds-Milbank, C. (1985). Couture: The great designers. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang Inc.
Sgourev, S. (2013). How Paris gave rise to cubism (and Picasso): Ambiguity and fragmentation in radical innovation. Organization Science, 24(6), 1601–1617.
Siggelkow, N. (2007). Persuasion with case studies. Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 20–24.
Smith, H. W. (1975). Strategies of social research: The methodological imagination. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Steele, V. (1993). Chanel in context. In. J. Ash & E. Wilson (Eds.), Chic thrills: A fashion reader. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Steele, V. (2009). Fifty years of fashion. New look to now. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
Walton, A. P., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2012). Creativity in its social context: The interplay of organizational norms, situational threat and gender. Creativity Research Journal, 24, 208–219.
Zelditch, M., Jr. (2001). Processes of legitimation: Recent developments and new directions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 64, 4–17.
Zuckerman, E. W. (1999). The categorical imperative: Securities analysts and the legitimacy discount. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 1398–1438.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cattani, G., Colucci, M., Ferriani, S. (2016). Chanel’s Creative Trajectory in the Field of Fashion: The Optimal Network Structuration Strategy. In: Corazza, G., Agnoli, S. (eds) Multidisciplinary Contributions to the Science of Creative Thinking. Creativity in the Twenty First Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-618-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-618-8_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-287-617-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-287-618-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)