Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Bright Modernity pp 227–249Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Modeurop: Using Color to Unify the European Shoe and Leather Industry

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Worlds of Consumption ((WC))

Abstract

In this chapter, Giertz-Mårtenson explains the history and the background of the European Shoe and Leather organization Modeurop, which united the European shoe industry for some 40 years, beginning in 1959. Inspired by the collaboration already existing among the Nordic countries, Modeurop represented the area of color forecasting. It managed to coordinate the development of leather colors on the European market (both West and East) for several decades. It created a base for decision-making and information-sharing that was reliable and influential. Modeurop proved that color was not only a concern of individual companies. It could also become a strong tool within an industry, if it was handled by a well-organized group.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In the relevant trade organization archives of former prominent member countries like Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, documents concerning the history of Modeurop (ME)—such as minutes from congresses, newsletters, financial statements, and correspondence—do not exist. To obtain reliable information, other sources had to be used, namely, a number of documents and photos from private archives belonging to people who earlier held various positions in ME. Also, press clippings from trade magazines in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden reported on some of the organization’s activities.

  2. 2.

    The author interviewed the following people: Lenena Aro, fashion consultant at Kenkäneuvosto (The Shoe and Leather Fashion Council), Helsinki, Finland, and member of the Finnish delegation to ME, 1975–1998 (mail and telephone interview, May–June 2012); Jan Ekblom, CEO of Klippans Läderfabrik, 1958–1987; Ängelholm, Sweden, chairman of SBR and NMR, ca. 1975–1985, and member of the Swedish delegation to ME during the same period (mail and telephone interview, May 2012); Rose Marie Gresch, ME secretary, Zurich, Switzerland, 1981–1995 (mail and telephone interview, May 2012); Marga Indra-Heide, fashion consultant at Modeausschuss Schuhe, Offenbach, Germany, and member of the ME Fashion Committee for several years (mail interview, May 2012); Sylvie Lefranc, director of the Bureau de Style des Industries du Cuir, Paris, France, 1973–2001, and president of the ME Fashion Committee from 1985 (approximately) to 1995 (interview in Paris, May 9, 2012); Ernst Steiner, ME treasurer, 1960–1995 (telephone interview, June 7, 2012); Kirsten Toxvaerd, managing director at Dansk Skomoderåd (Danish Shoe Fashion Council), 1974–1981, and head of the Danish delegation to ME, 1974–1981 (interview in Helsingör, Denmark, May 4, 2012); and Rolf Trüb, CEO of Bally Arola Switzerland, president of the ME Fashion Committee, 1975–1985, and president of ME, 1985–1995 (mail and telephone interview May–June 2012). I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all former colleagues and friends for taking the time to talk to me and to share their recollections of the work of Modeurop.

  3. 3.

    Statistiska Centralbyrån, ed., Statistisk årsbok för Sverige (Stockholm, 1945 and 1960).

  4. 4.

    “Kristidspolitik och kristidshushållning i Sverige under och efter andra världskriget,” 152:49, Statens offentliga utredningar.

  5. 5.

    Ibid.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    “Skobranschrådet konstitueras,” Skohandlaren, no. 9, 1945.

  8. 8.

    Minutes of SBR meeting, September 11, 1945, found in the ME file remnants in the Swedish Shoe Fashion Council (SBR) archive, Stockholm. The documents in this archive are not numbered, and the archive does not possess any finding aids.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    “Lädertidningen presenterar Skobranschrådet,” Lädertidningen, no. 21, 1945.

  11. 11.

    “Kort resumé över Skobranschrådets arbete och utveckling,” ca. 1968, SBR archive.

  12. 12.

    Information letter to members of the SBR (probably also sent out to the media), 1946, SBR archive.

  13. 13.

    Aili Pekonen, Report on “The Shoe Fashion in London. Impressions from a trip to the UK 22–26 October 1946,” November 1, 1946, SBR archive.

  14. 14.

    SBR archive.

  15. 15.

    Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2012).

  16. 16.

    See comments in Valerie Steele, Shoes: A Lexicon of Styles (London, 1998), 10.

  17. 17.

    “Färgernas psykologi i modet” (The importance of colors in fashion). In Lädertidningen, 22/1950, December 15, 1950.

  18. 18.

    SBR archive.

  19. 19.

    From “PM regarding the activities of the Nordic Fashion Council,” February 18, 1959, SBR archive.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    From minutes of NMR meeting in Stockholm, April 26, 1956, NMR files, SBR archive.

  22. 22.

    See Yuniya Kawamura, Fashion-ology: An Introduction to Fashion Studies (London, 2005).

  23. 23.

    The colors were called Havana, Mahogany, Chestnut, Golden Oak, Hazel, Club Brown, Swedish Tan, Marine, Morocco, Walnut, Sahara, Malaga, Poppy, Ruby, Japanese Blue, Turquoise, Shale, Pine, Cypress, Tobacco, Benedictine, Pastel Violet and Pastel Rose; SBR Modeprognos Höst/vinter 1954, SBR archive.

  24. 24.

    Examples can be found in “Modeprognoser 1950–60,” SBR archive, Stockholm.

  25. 25.

    Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la mode (Paris, 1993), 61.

  26. 26.

    The end of every publication was stamped with a large “Confidential” with the following explanation: “The forecast is confidential. It is therefore of great importance that its contents are respected. The new colors and their names in the Nordic Fashion Council’s Color collection may thus not be published until after the date of publication, as decided by the Council.” SBR archive.

  27. 27.

    This document, “A short summary of the work and development of the Swedish Shoe Fashion Council” (En kort sammanställning av arbetet och utvecklingen av Skobranschrådet), is located in the SBR archive and is presumably from 1968, eight years after the foundation of ME.

  28. 28.

    On July 1, 1937, the International Wool Publicity and Research Secretariat was formed and quickly renamed the International Wool Secretariat (IWS). Based in London, the IWS had offices in every major wool-producing country by the mid-1950s. “History of the Woolmark Brand,” http://www.woolmark.com/about-woolmark/history.

  29. 29.

    Interview with Leena Aro.

  30. 30.

    In the context of this book as a whole, in particular Chapter 10, it is worth recalling one instance of verified contact between the affiliated SBR—manifested in Pekonen’s trip shortly after the war—and the BCC and TCCA. The last of these organizations, reports Regina Lee Blaszczyk, saw shoe and leather colors as one of its major remits already in the 1920s. At the same time, one cannot draw a straight line from the TCCA’s history to that of ME, which developed from an inter-European process. Unfortunately, writing a history of transatlantic transfers and adaptations of knowledge and practices requires source material not currently available in this case.

  31. 31.

    A short notice in the trade magazine Läder och Skor (Leather and Shoes), from June 20, 1960, indicates that the Fashion Director Max Matter of Bally, Switzerland, was visiting Stockholm, Sweden in May 1960. It is likely that he met with representatives of SBR and NMR during this visit.

  32. 32.

    Interview with Ernst Steiner.

  33. 33.

    Mendes and de la Haye, 20th Century Fashion, 158–92.

  34. 34.

    See Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson, “Looking into the Future: A Study of Trend Analysis in the Fashion Industry” (MA thesis, Stockholm University, 2006).

  35. 35.

    The spirit that prevailed in Paris in the 1960s was the right atmosphere for the private trend business. In 1960, Maime Arnodin established an agence de style, later called MAFIA, in Paris. In 1970, Dominique Peclers, who worked as a stylist at the department store Printemps, opened her own “trend agency” in order to provide advice and information for the fashion industry on upcoming seasons of color and fashion trends. Her company, Peclers Paris, is still regarded as a major player in the field. The same applies to Promostyl, founded in 1966 by Françoise Vincent-Richard. Giertz-Mårtenson, “Looking into the Future.”

  36. 36.

    Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  37. 37.

    East Germany joined in 1974. The years that the other countries joined were not preserved in the materials used for this study.

  38. 38.

    Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  39. 39.

    Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  40. 40.

    Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  41. 41.

    In the 1990s, some of the members of the Textile and Fashion Committee were Leena Aro, Fashion consultant Kenkäneuvosto, Finland; Susanne Galliker, Fashion consultant Swiss Textile Fashion Council and Intercolor; Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson, CEO Swedish Fashion Council, Sweden; Marga Indra Heide, Fashion Consultant, Modeausschuss Schuhe, Germany; Sylvie Lefranc, Director Bureau de Style des Industries du Cuir, France. A special expert for Men´s fashions was Christine Grandis, Director Oestrreichisches Modesekretariat, Austria.

  42. 42.

    Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  43. 43.

    Interview with Kirsten Toxvaerd.

  44. 44.

    Interview with former UN Under Secretary General Jan Mårtenson.

  45. 45.

    Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  46. 46.

    Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  47. 47.

    See “Bulletin d´Information” from Modeurop for spring/summer 1971.

  48. 48.

    Interview with Rolf Trüb.

  49. 49.

    Sylvie Lefranc from France remembers, “Arranging a congress could be a question of doing things bigger and better than others. There was a certain competition between hosting nations. And it was a very costly event—some of it being paid by congress fees from attending delegates and a small contribution from Modeurop. But the final bill had to be paid by the hosting country.” Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  50. 50.

    Interview with Kirsten Toxvaerd, who stated that ME, like many other international organizations, was watched by politicians, the media, and consumers. “Everything had to be simpler and more efficient.”

  51. 51.

    Interview with Rolf Trüb.

  52. 52.

    Interview with Kirsten Toxvaerd.

  53. 53.

    “Such ties were developed during the informal luncheon and evening get-togethers of ME. They helped build a good business atmosphere, which can hardly be created if you do not appreciate and sympathize with the other individual.” Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  54. 54.

    Interview with Rolf Trüb.

  55. 55.

    The DSI informs and coordinates trends in the German Shoe Industry, with a particular interest in children’s shoes. For more, see their website at http://www.schuhinstitut.de/.

  56. 56.

    Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  57. 57.

    “When visiting a leading Italian tannery, I once saw a Modeurop color card on a wall. When I commented, “It’s really good to see that you too use Modeurop,” I got the following reply: “No, the color card is only there as a warning example.” Interview with Jan Ekblom.

  58. 58.

    Kawamura, Fashion-ology.

  59. 59.

    Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 6, describes fashion intermediaries as “folks often on the corporate front line, who were charged with the tasks of scoping out consumer tastes and determining the likely direction of change.”

  60. 60.

    Interview with Sylvie Lefranc.

  61. 61.

    Interview with Kirsten Toxvaerd.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Business History, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson

Authors
  1. Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ingrid Giertz-Mårtenson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

    Regina Lee Blaszczyk

  2. Institute for Economic & Social History, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Uwe Spiekermann

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Giertz-Mårtenson, I. (2017). Modeurop: Using Color to Unify the European Shoe and Leather Industry. In: Blaszczyk, R., Spiekermann, U. (eds) Bright Modernity. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50745-3_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50745-3_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-50744-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50745-3

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation