In the international literature, there is an increasing attention on the analysis of the fashion city (Breward & Gilbert, 2006) and its implication on city branding and competitiveness (Jensen, 2005; Power & Hauge, 2008; Pasquinelli, 2010) and local identity (Bovone, 2006). Some examples are the study of Weller (2013) who examines the success of New Zealand’s designer fashion industry in the first years of the twenty-first century. Hauge, Malmberg & Power (2009) analyse the Swedish fashion cluster underlining that it is benefit from localisation economies, but it also follow rules of globalised industries. Rantisi (2004) examines how New York City was able to reinvent itself as a fashion capital. By tracing the origins of women's ready-to-wear in New York in the late nineteenth century and its consolidation in the Garment District by the early twentieth century.

Jansson & Power (2010) approaches the ways in which fashion and design-based industrial actors contribute to creating images and myths that support global-city status. The Italian city of Milan is used as a case study to show how the city is an arena where different brand channels are negotiated and formed to service fashion and design branding.

Fashion capitals usually have a broad mix of business, financial, entertainment, cultural and leisure activities and are internationally recognised for having a unique and strong identity (Gemperli, 2010)

In this chart of fashion capital city, Italy ranked in a good position with Milan as capital fashion city. Milan emerged as a fashion capital city in 1970s, while Florence and Rome stayed in the following positions (Merlo & Polese, 2006). Florence is usually ranked in the third position in Italy thanks to the luxury pole around the metropolitan area with global brand as Gucci, Ferragamo and Prada.

The Global Fashion Monitor (2012) scored Florence at the thirteen position at global level in the ‘World's Leading Cities for Fashion’, with a gain of three position from previous chart and indicating as motivation “Florence: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli — A proud heritage to a thriving fashion industry”. This situation anyways is not guaranteed in the future. In fact some authors also underlined that this chart of global city will not be maintained in the future as city from developing countries are increasingly enter in the competition (McKinsey, 2013; Gilbert, 2006). In particular, McKinsey (2013) ranks Paris, London, Milan and Seoul in the mature growing fashion industry in the Luxury segment, while Moscow, Singapore, San Peterbrurg, Beijing, Shangai, San Paolo etc as emerging city in the global fashion industry.

FASHION AND CITY BRANDING

Crewe & Beaverstock (1998) underlined the contemporary fashion industry and the role it plays in identity formation has created a situation where fashion can be taken seriously as a cultural industry supplying symbolic content in sold goods. In this context fashion is identified as a powerful stylistic marker, not a simply part of a trivial consumer culture.
Jansson & Power (2010) underlined that the value of global fashion city-based brands lies partly in their ability to persuade consumers of products’excellence, quality, and innovation. Also, the brand infuses products (and firms) with the ‘feel’ of the city: cool clothes come from cool cities. Labels of origin such as ‘Made in Italy’ or Rive Gauche are used as strategic tools in the fashion industry (Hauge et al., 2009).

Positive connections between product images and place may create a kind of monopoly rent and therein can create barriers to entry for products from competing places; and give firms an incentive for being in the ‘right’ place. Jansson & Power (2010) underline also that clustering in few fashion city produce also some other benefits as agglomerations of firms and consumers play a central role in the gathering, creation, and transfer of industry-relevant knowledge and cluster of creative industries (Lazzeretti & Capone, 2015).

There is in fact an increasing effort in the research on the city branding with the help of local industry and local cultural production (Jensen, 2005). Breward & Gilber (2006) have underlined that city branding is more a focus from city authorities in order to appear in the global hierarchy of fashion capital. Niedamysl (2004) besides points out that city branding has the main aim of attracting visitors, investors or inhabitants.

Power & Hauge (2008) discuss the role of the branding for territories, places and cities, underlining that has been a topic deeply undervalued for territorial competitiveness and they analyse the fashion industry as an example.

City branding is a recent strand of research with a growing trend (Merrilees, Miller & Herington, 2009) and it results a complex research theme, due to its multidisciplinary approach (Pike, 2011). Born at the beginning for the analysis of the image of the city, it deals increasingly with analysis of marketing strategies and policy for urban context (Merrilees, Miller & Herington, 2012). At the moment, it is a theme that rise interest from different subjects as marketing, management, but also urban studies, economic geography and urban and regional development.

If an analysis on ISI Web of Science is developed on ‘city branding’, over 100 articles are collected on these themes with article from the following Journal as Cities, International Journal of Tourism Science, Journal of Business Research, Urban Studies, Applied Geography, Current Issues in Tourism, European Journal of Marketing, etc. These Journals confirm the multidisciplinary approach and the interest on city branding from several stakeholders: policy-makers, urban planners, marketing strategist, urban developer, etc.

Within the theme, several studies have focused on how city branding is particularly attached to some local industries and activities, that denote the area and the city. In this context, one of the most interesting aspect is interactions between branding and fashion (Jansson & Power, 2010; Hauge et al .. 2009; Martinez, 2007).

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of fashion and fashion design for the city of Florence, in the formation of a new image of the city, also in a perspective of new branding strategies for the future.

The analysis is based on a multi-level approach. First, an initial analysis is developed on publications on ‘city branding’ on ISI Web of Science to identify the relevance of the theme and the most used methodologies in these studies. The second part of the work is instead based on analysis of reviews of online communities (TripAdvisor, Twitter, etc.) of the attractions of the city and a questionnaire is administrated to visitors of the main fashion outlets in Florence (The Mall, Barberino Desegner Outlet, etc.), in order to emphasize the perception of visitors and consumers of fashion in the city and how it contributes to the fashion city branding of the city of Florence.

From the point of view of marketing, several authors have tried to analyse the brand association in fashion (Ranfagni, Guercini & Crawford, 2014), but mainly from the point of view of products. In this work, we try to contribute to this debate through the analysis of online communities and city branding of Florence.

Merrilees et al. (2009) investigate what are the city attributes influencing city brand attitudes with a quantitative survey of a sample of 878 residents of the Gold Coast City. Hankinson's (2001) study of twelve English cities shows the diversity of approaches in how city organizations market and brand themselves. Vanolo (2008) analysed the city of Turin and its transition from post-industrial to a cultural and creative city. This work develop a single stake-holder perspective as most studies avoid to considers multiple stakeholders perception on city branding (Merrilees et al., 2012).

Results confirm the importance of the fashion industry in the perceived image of Florence from the visitors and for the future city branding policies are even more strategic to continue to exploit the competitive advantage that Florence has in the fashion industry globally.

• Francesco Capone(University of Florence, Italy)
• Luciana Lazzeretti(University of Florence, Italy)