African luxury market

The book I chose to look at is a book that I am currently reading by (1) Corner, F (2014) Why fashion matters. Frances Corner has been the head of the London college of fashion since 2005. As a design student I wanted to also gain insight into the economic side to further my knowledge and possibly a sociological explanation into why fashion is so personal to us. I chose the ‘The African luxury market’ because it referred to Africa’s potential to be both a ‘producer and ultimately consumer of luxury goods’ (page 16) you generally think of the production of clothing you is produced in Asia and consumed in Western societies.

I chose a website which was about the international Herald tribune’s 2012 by (2) Doran, S (2012) Luxury society, because it was referenced by Corner on page 16 of ‘Why fashion matters’. Within the article it mentioned Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney and Fendi have used Africa as a source of production because the work in Africa has been described as exceptional hand work which showed that Africa is becoming a producer of luxury goods.

I then found a newspaper article by (3) Paton, E (2014) Luxury heavyweights eye Africa’s newly affluent, Financial times. Within the article it mentioned the African market was dismissed by the luxury industry for years and now their target market is ‘the emerging…established middle class and the affluent African consumer who’s probably extremely well traveled and brand savvy,” Sue Fox, managing director for Estée Lauder in sub-Saharan Africa’. This showed that the rising African middle class population is becoming a consumer of luxury goods.

References

Book (1) – Corner, F (2014) Why fashion matters, London: Thames and Hudson

Webpage (2) – Doran, S (2012) Luxury society,  https://www.luxurysociety.com/en/articles/2012/09/luxury-brands-the-promise-of-africa-suzy-menkes/  [Accessed 22 October 2017].

Newspaper Article (3) – Paton, E (2014) Luxury heavyweights eye Africa’s newly affluent, Financial times, 19 September