Before examining the strategic positions that Japanese designers have taken within the French fashion field, we will first look more closely at the structure of fashion through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the “field.”

Bourdieu analyzed the Parisian high fashion field in his essays “The Designer and His Brand,” “Haute Couture and Haute Culture,” as well as in parts of his book Distinction. There, he approached fashion not merely as a phenomenon of trends, but as a form of structural struggle within a “field of cultural production.”

According to Bourdieu, the fashion field, like art and literature, is a space governed by its own rules and value systems. Designers, critics, editors, clients, and educational institutions interact within this space while competing over the definition of what counts as “legitimate” fashion. What is crucial is that this field is not simply a market. Commercial success and symbolic legitimacy do not necessarily coincide. The fashion field operates according to an internal logic of evaluation that differs from pure market principles. In this respect, it shares characteristics with other domains of cultural production that Bourdieu examined.

Struggles within the field are also struggles over the distribution and conversion of different forms of capital. Economic capital (financial resources and sales), cultural capital (technical skill and aesthetic knowledge), social capital (networks with clients, buyers, and editors), and symbolic capital (prestige and authority) are mutually convertible. Designers strategically mobilize these forms of capital. Prestige can be transformed into economic value, and historical authority accumulates as legitimacy. Fashion, therefore, is not only a competition of aesthetics but also a strategic game centered on the management of capital.

Within the field, there exists a structural opposition between dominant designers, who have already accumulated substantial symbolic capital, and newcomers who seek to challenge them. Dominant designers tend to adopt conservative strategies aimed at preserving established values, emphasizing tradition, refinement, and permanence. New entrants, by contrast, pursue subversive strategies that challenge existing criteria of value, foregrounding youth, innovation, and futurity. While the dominant position celebrates luxury, elegance, balance, and durability, the newcomer position often embraces the kitsch, the humorous, the functional, and the futuristic. Innovation, in this sense, emerges not simply from individual talent but from differences in position within the field itself.

In the Paris of the 1960s, which Bourdieu frequently referenced, young designers employing subversive strategies began to rise to prominence. For example, André Courrèges introduced the miniskirt and geometric designs, while Paco Rabanne shocked the couture world with his metal-based “space-age” creations. They sought to relativize the symbolic capital accumulated by dominant figures such as Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain. Historical transformations in fashion emerge from this tension between dominance and challenge.

Bourdieu’s analysis allows us to understand fashion not merely as a succession of trends, but as a structured space of struggle. Innovation is not an accidental occurrence; it is the outcome of strategic actions undertaken by agents occupying different positions within the field and mobilizing various forms of capital.

In the next episode, we will examine how Japanese designers entered this structure, what forms of capital they mobilized, and which strategic positions they chose within the French fashion field.

References

Pierre Bourdieu (with Yvette Delsaut), “Le couturier et sa griffe: contribution à une théorie de la magie” in Actes de la recherche en sciences socials, 1 September 1975, pp.7-36

Pierre Bourdieu, “Haute Couture and Haute Culture” in Sociology in Question, London, Sage, 1995, pp.132-138

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,1984

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