Accounting, the ‘Art of Interessment’ and the ‘Good Spokesperson’: innovation in action in luxury high fashion (1959–1979)

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the adoption of technological innovation, as well as the rise of accounting, management and organisational innovative practices in the luxury high-fashion industry, basing our analysis on the iconic brand Brioni. Grounded in the prior literature on the history of innovation and customisation, we develop a socio-technical analysis of the relocations, technology innovations and production transformations in 1959–1979. In this period – recalled by fashion historians as full of technical, production and process innovations – the company built a production-consumption chain organised around the strategy of demand-pull product customisation, by adopting and adapting technologies imported from elsewhere, and deployed by the work of hundreds of local tailors and seamstresses in tandem with external foreign trainers. We argue that the continuous ‘Art of Interessment’, which sustained technological, product and process innovations, was promoted by a team of ‘judiciously chosen Spokespersons’, who helped to translate company policy into practice, thus expanding production, controlling costs, reducing the manufacturing cycle and improving quality. The socio-technical investigation illustrates the pivotal role played by the rise and spread of innovative accounting and labour practices for customers of variable taste, size and geometry. In a related manner, the study highlights the building of a new architecture of performance management and quality information systems which, in tandem with changing accounting practices, helped to sustain Brioni's success across the observed two decades.

KEYWORDS:

• Accounting
• luxury high fashion
• innovation
• Akrich-Callon-Latour
• socio-technical analysis

Acknowledgements

The comments of the AHR Editor Cheryl McWatters, as well of Marcia Annisette, David Cooper, Yves Gendron and Dean Neu are gratefully acknowledged. The manuscript has also benefitted from comments received at the AAA and EAA annual conferences, as well as at the 2017 Silk Road Accounting History conference, Shanghai and at the 2018 Telfer Accounting and Finance Annual Conference, Ottawa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. From herein Akrich, Callon, and Latour is indicated as ‘ACL’.

2. We note that the paucity of research on innovation in high fashion is also confirmed outside the boundaries of accounting and accounting history journals. Two notable exceptions outside the accounting and accounting history fields of study have focussed on the search of innovation in fashion styles (i.e. Cappetta, Cillo, and Ponti 2006; Cillo and Verona 2008).

3. Notable exceptions in other non-accounting journals also are not focussed on luxury high fashion. While Lazerson (1995), for example, focussed on ‘knitwear’, Richardson (1996) examined ‘surf wear and casual wear’, and Djelic and Ainamo (1999) investigated different forms of organisational networks in the broad fashion industry.

4. Revellino and Mouritsen (2015) imply that researchers have tended to focus on knowledge-intensive firms and high-technology start-ups because innovation is a key component of organisational strategy. Importantly, others argue that innovation is a key component of most industries (cf. Drucker 1998: Danneels 2002), including the high-fashion (Mora 2003a, 2003b) and low-fashion (Jeacle and Carter 2012) industries.

5. Previous research has raised questions about the fallibility of memory, especially when dealing with emotion-laden and traumatic topics (cf. Thomson 1999, 291; Yow 2005, 45). This issue is less of a concern in the current study given the topic of the interviews (cf. Yow 2005, 43).

6. The primary sources used in this manuscript differ considerably from those used in Sargiacomo (2008).

7. The use of a small number of in-depth interviews with senior managers and other key organisational participants is quite common (cf. Maclean, Harvey, and Chia 2012) as is the use of multiple follow-up interviews with a temporal space between interviews (cf. Ezzamel and Willmott 1998, 368; Chua, Mahama, and Dirsmith 2007, 58).

8. Indeed, the notary deed dated 31 December 1945 by the notary Iginio Clementi lists another founding father, Armando Calcani, who actually was the first President of the Board. This is why the limited liability company was initially named after the President's surname (Civitavecchia Historical Archive).

9. Fashion historians (i.e. Giorgetti 1995; Chenoune 1998) and the Harvard Business School case (Bell 2003, HBS, 9-503-057) unanimously highlight that Brioni's first 1945 location was Via Barberini 79 in Rome, as confirmed by the company's website (https://www.brioni.com/it/heritage_section). On the contrary, the primary sources accessed, in particular the ‘Report of the Administrators 1945–1946’, indicate that the first location was Via Giovanni Amendola n. 79 in Rome. Only in 1947 do the same primary sources suggest the move to Via Barberini 79.

10. Interviews with Checchino Fonticoli.

11. Therein, it is important to note that Checchino Fonticoli's memories – about the Rome workshop – chime with the picture displayed on Brioni's website (https://www.brioni.com/it/heritage_section). Nevertheless, it is apparent that the picture (at the time of finalising this submission) erroneously addresses the 1959 Penne's organisational process. A confirmation of the mistake is contained in Vergani's volume, The Abruzzi Tailor's Workshop (2004, 70–71), where the same picture correctly portrays the Rome workshop in the 1950s.

12. By ‘artefacts’ we mean, any physical object – document, report, template – upon which accounting, management or organisational numbers and/or notations or calculations are inscribed (cf., Robson 1992, 689; Quattrone 2009, 104).

13. In the mid-1950s, movie stars, such as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Rock Hudson, Anthony Quinn and Henry Fonda, began to visit ‘Brioni’ (Giorgetti 1995, 40; 122). These visits were, in part, the result of the identification by the US press of Brioni as a source of a ‘new look for men’ (New York Times, September, 1955), the leader of a ‘second Italian Renaissance’ (The Boston Herald, October, 1955), and the ‘Dior for men’ (Life, October, 1955).

14. The author prepared all translations into English from the primary sources present at the RNSA.

15. Opening the respective actual official websites, it is still possible to see the many similarities in the outside of the main factory buildings of Sealup in Gallarate (http://sealup.net/IT/about) as compared to Brioni's premises in Penne (www.brioni.com).

16. The author prepared all translations into English of the interviews with Brioni's key actors.

17. Comparing the 1976 map with the 1971 one located at the RNSA and countersigned by the Engineer Donato Acciavatti on 20.11.1971 in Pescara, it is easy to discern several space differences between the overall 1971–1976 production cycles, some which are those recalled by Marcotullio's oral testimonies.

18. Brioni tailors periodically visited retail outlets to take custom fittings for made-to-measure clients. The client selected a suit style, including the combination of models, patterns, fabrics, colours and finishings.

19. For example, a Brioni fashion show, organised by Woolands of Knightsbridge, took place in London in 1961. Likewise, a Brioni team visited Mituskoshi retailers in Tokyo in 1967 (Giorgetti 1995, 153; 175).

20. Importantly, when in 2012 we accessed the factory's SAP R/3 customised accounting software, we realised that the contemporary standard/actual fabric/labour cost variance was ‘heavily’ replicating the reports launched four decades earlier in the ‘Roman Style’ Factory.

21. From this vantage point, the use of accounting to extract these extra sewing minutes can be viewed as a type of process improvement. For a more contemporary comparison, see Cammett (2006, 35) and Neu, Rahaman, and Everett (2014).

22. The introduction of a QI system appears similar to, and seems to foreshadow, what during the 1980s in North America came to be referred to as TQM. It also appears to overlap with what Harvard Business Review referred to as a ‘house of quality’ approach that Toyota began to use in 1972 (Hauser and Clausing 1988). This latter approach provided a set of ‘planning and communication tools’ that connected together the consumption and production parts of the chain, thereby helping to design and produce products that ‘reflected customers’ desires and tastes’. Similar themes regarding the role of accounting artefacts in triggering and facilitating adaptive change appear in the late 1980s in the relevance lost (Johnson and Kaplan 1987) and relevance regained (Johnson 2002) literatures.