Fashion as a cultural communication medium in nation branding: Proposal of a conceptual model

In this study, it is asserted that fashion can be employed as a cultural communication medium in nation marketing. For this purpose, a three-staged, cyclical conceptual model aiming to conduct due diligence and strategy development is generated. Firstly, the concepts of branding and nation branding are introduced. The role and importance of creative industries in knowledge-based economy are examined. Fashion as a cultural and communicative domain is identified and exemplified. The rest of the work is devoted to the development and explanation of the model. The first stage of the model consists of two main categories namely defining the fashion system and specifying national identity in fashion respectively. The second stage focuses on the structure of the fashion industry by analyzing the challenges and strategies. The last stage of the model namely representation, presents two case studies revealing the validity for the main categories, sub-categories, and elements of the former stages of the model. Thus, this stage illustrates how to use the model according to relative contexts. The qualitative data of the study is derived from Brazilian fashion industry. By employing a semiotic approach, the first case study focuses on an internationalized Brazilian fashion brand's collections presented at Sao Paulo Fashion Week between 2012 and 2016. The second case study, focuses on Sao Paulo Fashion Week, more precisely the representation power of the Brazilian fashion in the global fashion scene based on expert opinions from the field. The study intends to put the proposed model in the developing fashion industries' agenda as an instrument of flourishing their creativity analytically and representing their country in a positive way on the global runaway.