Tailoring Cosmopolitanism in the Italian Nordest

Cosmopolitanism has become a potent means through which the fashion industry captures value in the global economy. Recognizing the selling power of a cosmopolitan imaginary, the provincial clothing firms of North East Italy actively cultivate associations with global cities— drawing from their flow of people, cultures, images, and ideas—to absorb their urban edge and worldly aura. Located in predominantly rural areas far from established fashion centers, these firms symbolically capture the urbs through distribution, communication, and marketing strategies that endorse cities’ mythologies of modernity and excitement. Using stratagems centered around metropolitan cosmopolitanism, firms like Benetton and Diesel—prototypes of the industrial system of the region—skillfully transformed their labels into trendy "cosmobrands" and gained a central place in the topography of transnational fashion networks.