“Made in Canada”: Local production networks in the Canadian fashion industry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The fashion industry is a highly globalized industry increasingly dominated by international firms that favour flexible, efficient supply chains in order to produce trendy clothing at the lowest price. While much of the fashion industry follows the logics of global production networks, this paper presents a case where small, independent firms have chosen instead to engage with local production networks. Drawing on interviews with 87 independent fashion designers and key informants, this paper examines the following question: In the context of global production, why do independent fashion designers choose to work locally? In answering this question, three key findings are presented: the motivations of designers who emphasize timeless design and high‐quality local manufacturing; the strategies employed by designers to cultivate exclusivity and loyalty through the distribution of their collections; and the ways in which unique consumption experiences are utilized to articulate the values of their brand to consumers. While operating outside of the traditional fashion system provides independent fashion designers with the space for creativity, innovation, and control over their brand, it will be argued it also creates challenges with respect to growth beyond their niche market.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.029 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".