The Tale of Fashion Brands and Ethical Consumption: A Case Study of Vivienne Westwood’s Brand Identity and Ethical Communication with Chinese Consumers

Sammanfattning

The fashion industry has been criticized for its significant negative environmental and labor rights impacts. In response, some fashion brands are now seeking to address these concerns by integrating ethical values into their operations and forming alliances with consumers to promote ethical consumption. While they have constructed ethical values and aim to communicate them to their consumers, the effectiveness of such efforts, especially in a cross-cultural context, is less understood. This research takes the fashion brand Vivienne Westwood and its Chinese consumers as a case study to examine how Vivienne Westwood has constructed its ethical values as part of its brand identity, and to investigate the factors that have limited the effectiveness of communicating these messages to their Chinese consumers. By analyzing Vivienne Westwood's official discourses and conducting semi-structured interviews with its Chinese consumers, the findings show that Vivienne Westwood's identity myth is established around the founder's life story and then partially reinterpreted by the cultural values embedded in Chinese consumers’ cultural contexts, such as their distinct heroes, symbols, and rituals. This, combined with the brand's limited communication of these values, has led to the marginalization of ethical meanings, thereby forming a negotiated reading among the Chinese consumers.