Fashion Cities

[gjosephunf]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/09/worlds-leading-cities-fashion/3182/

Among U.S. cities, only New York and L.A. make the global top 20, but we wanted to look at how fashion designers are spread out and concentrated across America's cities. To do so, we turned to Rob Sentz of the Economic Modeling Specialists who has a unique database on both employed and self-employed fashion designers based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, among other sources.

Sentz narrowed his search to the top 50 largest U.S. metros (all with populations over one million people) and ranked them according to their location quotients, a commonly used measure of a region's relative concentration of an occupation or industry. A location quotient of 1 means the industry or occupation matches the national average, a location quotient of 2 is double that, and so on. The Martin Prosperity Institute’s Zara Matheson mapped the data.



Map by MPI's Zara Matheson

Here’s how the top 20 U.S. metros stack up in terms of their number of fashion designers, location quotient, and median earnings for fashion designers.

                                            Top 20 Large Metros for Fashion Designers

Rank         Metro                           No. of Total Fashion Designers                          Median Hourly Earnings Location Quotient
1    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA    6,825                      $34.40                        4.84
2    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA                            3,641                      $33.75                        3.82
3    Columbus, OH                                                                      518                      $26.69                        3.37
4    Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN                      282                      $30.59                        2.13
5    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA                                      540                      $35.13                        1.55
6    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA                              239                      $27.65                        1.36
7    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA                                      262                      $29.39                        1.11
8    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA                                              329                      $30.29                        1.10
9    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN                                      160                      $22.13                        0.97
10    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA                              107                      $25.27                        0.95
11    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA                                      147                      $27.55                        0.94
12    Jacksonville, FL                                                87                      $30.67                        0.89
13    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH                                      343                      $28.33                        0.84
14    Raleigh-Cary, NC                                                                71                      $27.90                        0.81
15    Kansas City, MO-KS                                                              118                      $22.79                        0.72
16    Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY                                                        62                      $29.65                        0.71
17    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA                                        63                      $30.90                        0.70
18    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL                      256                      $25.82                        0.67
19    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA                              136                      $22.75                        0.63
20    Memphis, TN-MS-AR                                                                64                      $33.25                        0.62

Table data courtesy of EMSI

The idea of the fashion city is now a feature of the global competition between cities, and has become a part of broader strategies of metropolitan boosterism that give prominence to what have become known as the ‘cultural industries.’…Permutations of [London, Paris, New York, Milan and Tokyo] and a few others have been routinely incorporated into the advertising of high fashion, after the name of a designer or brand, or etched into the glass of a shop window. In some cases the name of the fashion capital is incorporated into a brand name itself (as perhaps most famously in the case of DKNY â€" Donna Karan New York).

According to the EMSI's research Jacksonville has 87 fashion designers, averaging $30.67 an hour. Having a location quotient of 1 industry/occupation meets the national average. Jacksonville ranked 0.89 compared to Boston (0.84), Kansas City (0.72), New Orleans (0.70), and Miami (0.60).

Definitely a must read article comparing industry and a city's metropolitan area. Why do you think Jacksonville has a higher location quotient than Miami?

[Adam W]

Gerald - I'll bite, as this is clearly fallout from a prior thread.

To answer your question - not sure. I don't understand the maths behind location quotients. I looked it up after reading the article and have to admit it was a bit beyond me.

As near as I can tell, it may have to do (in part) with the number of people they have listed as designers vs the total population of the metro area. The metro area of Miami is much, much larger than Jax - so even though Miami has 3 times as many designers as Jax, it has fewer per capita.

I see they got their numbers from various US gov't sources (among other sources, apparently). I'd be interested to see who the 87 designers in Jax are. I have a feeling that a large number of them are employed by Venus Swimwear. Salt Life may be another fairly large employer.

It's worth noting that Florida ranks below the national average, according to the article - if you go by LQ alone. And by that same metric, Jax is bested by Cincinnati.

So, to make a long story short - I'd question the methodology, because it's hard to say without more information. The first thing I'd question is what is meant by "designer." Apparently it's anyone who self-identifies as a designer (on a census or for employment purposes). That could mean anything from a fashion designer to someone working in a sweatshop. Maybe not quite, but without more information, it's hard to know exactly what information is being considered to reach these conclusions - you may have x "designers" in one location and y "designers" in another - but the caliber of the designers and the actual kind of work they are doing may not be anything alike. It might be a case of comparing apples and oranges.

The article seems to show that fashion is basically a non-issue in the USA outside of a few key places - most of the metro areas in the table had LQs below 1. A point echoed by one commenter on the story who posted, "There are half a dozen fashion cities in the world, the rest are churning out schmattas [sic] for the masses."