The internal conflict of the corporate artist : Balance between artistic - and commercial interests within artistically driven fashion brands

Sammanfattning: There has been a medial success in Swedish fashion during the last years. If one studies these companies they tend to tell another story financially. Regardless of financial or medial success artistically driven fashion brands have been a big part of the development of Swedish Fashion. For artistically driven fashion companies the Artistic freedom tend to be the main driving force and the very reason for establishing their own brand. There is a need to balance between artistic and commercial interests, which could imply that designers need to design more commercially marketable garments to finance the conceptual department. Financial resources can create artistic freedom but bringing in wrong investors could do the opposite. The financial dilemma of gaining economic resources by designing more marketable garments makes the brand image loose credibility since it tend to rely on the artistic direction. Conclusion: Through out the study we have identified that there exist an internal conflict inside the artistically driven fashion designer. The corporate artist exists of the creative mind, which represents the intrinsic values that motivate and inspire the artist. To be able to run a fashion brand the artist also needs to have managerial and entrepreneurial skills to be able to develop. These two perspectives often collide and the designer needs to make some difficult choices.