Fine fashion: using symbolic artifacts, sensemaking, and sensegiving to construct identity and image

In the fashion industry, artifacts simultaneously constitute the products and processes of the work of fashion firms and the industry itself. Artifacts in the form of exclusive dressware and accessories are the obvious physical products of the firms involved. Simultaneously, however, those products are also the main means by which these firms project their images, and especially their organizational and brand images, to their stakeholders so that those stakeholders (customers, competitors, fashion arbiters like Vogue, etc.) can make sense of the firm in the ways the organization’s leaders desire. These image projections, and their stakeholders’ responses to them, in turn, affect the identities and subsequent artifacts of the image projecting firms. Put differently, fashion artifacts are both the means and the ends of sensegiving and sensemaking activities intended to enhance the image and identity of image-driven organizations. By exploring some aspects of the processes involving high-fashion artifacts, we explicate a number of dynamics associated with organizational sensegiving and sensemaking that might apply to a wider domain than the fashion industry alone. Overall, we treat the fashion industry as a revealing context for understanding some organizational processes usually hidden in less image-focused industries. Our observations derive from an ongoing research project involving some of the most visible names the fashion industry, including Versace, Bottega Veneta, Ferragamo, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton, among others.