Firm Entry and Institutional Lock-in:An Organizational Ecology Analysisof the Global Fashion Design Industry

Few industries are more concentrated than the global fashion industry. We analyse thegeography and evolution of the ready-to-wear fashion design industry by looking at the yearlyentry rates following an organizational ecology approach. In contrast to earlier studies onmanufacturing industries, we find that legitimation effects are local and competition effectsare global. This result points to the rapid turnover of ideas in fashion on the one hand and theglobal demand for fashion apparel on the other hand. We attribute the decline of Paris in thepost-war period to 'institutional lock-in', which prevented a ready-to-wear cluster to emerge asvested interested of haute couture designers were threatened. An extended organizationalecology model provides empirical support for this claim...