Pricing Looks

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of status for the economic value of products by focusing on the pricing of fashion models. More specifically, it considers the apparent arbitrariness of aesthetic evaluation that actors in the fashion industry face and how it leads to uncertainty regarding the value of the ‘look’ to be sold. Drawing on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews with modelling agents and fashion clients in New York and London, the chapter analyses the social production of value in the aesthetic goods market. It suggests that the status of models in the market emerges from a reputation that is gained by working for prestigious magazines and photographers despite the typically low pay — or worse, no pay at all — in these jobs.

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