The fashion industry is central to the history of global business, and this fascinating book presents the results of a multivocal ethnography of transnational capitalism with a focus on the relation between Chinese and Italian entrepreneurs and workers in the fashion industry. It demonstrates the dynamic and shifting character of the interactions between Italian and Chinese firms and their financial, technical, social, and aesthetic capital. The integrated analysis put forth by the authors goes beyond problems on the order of negotiation, translation, or corruption to unpack these firms’ complex entanglements with the processes of networking, family ties, the relation between public and private capital, and the transfer of skills at the domestic and international levels. The authors—along with fashion industry expert Simona Segre Reinach, who signs chapter 4—have carried out long-term research in China and Italy, interviewing a group of fashion industrialists and workers who represent the range of businesses in the industry in terms of size, prestige, and product. An essential strength of the book resides in its selection of interviewees. Though names have been changed for reasons of privacy, the reader gets the sense that the authors deliberately assembled a group that is highly representative of the various levels of authority and seniority in the profession, from workers to firm owners, across at least two generations in China and in Italy.

The book's structure is thematic and organized into three parts. The first part addresses the negotiation of value and offers an in-depth theoretical discussion of the nature of Chinese-Italian capitalism in the fashion industry. The second part addresses questions of historical legacies and revisionist histories aimed in particular at profound changes—in China from the Mao era to today and in Italy upon the relocation of part of the activity of local industrial clusters in the context of the financialization of global luxury groups. The third part of the book considers kinship and transnational capitalism and engages directly with business history literature, from the classic works of Alfred D. Chandler to the most recent histories of family firms.

Several kinds of firms appear at the intersection of Chinese and Italian capital in the book. Essential to this history is the transition in China from the Maoist regime via the Cultural Revolution to an embrace of capitalism in a Western sense. Those interviewed in the book who are of the generation of witnesses to this transition supply memories of the Mao regime and the era of Deng Xiaoping as well as descriptions of the profound mutations to the structures of the Chinese economy in just a few decades. As earlier studies (including Juanjuan Wu's work) have shown, the Maoist regime contributed to a quasi-erasure of fashion culture within the Chinese population. As China confronted the task of producing garments in higher numbers for its own markets and the masses, its cultural legacy meant that both foreign and local investors in the fashion business had concluded that design experience and skills were lacking among Chinese fashion entrepreneurs. The hope, then, was that Italian entrepreneurs could contribute their creative skills along with their financial capital. This imbalance in creative forces has persisted to this day, along with an abiding prejudice within both Italian and Chinese milieus that only Westerners have the requisite creative design skills. The authors’ methodology of qualitative interviews, and even the self-reflection they bring regarding their own origins and language skills, allows them to capably track complex and essential elements of the tensions in the international fashion business with their primary source materials. The authors’ profound understanding of such discourses allows them to illuminate how these representations rest not upon tangible facts but upon cultural representations and, as mentioned, prejudices. In some instances, the authors even note that simply being Italian is enough to be considered by Chinese actors to be carrying italianità, a form of good taste that seems out of reach to even those Chinese workers and capitalists who have lived a significant amount of time in the West and, in particular, Italy. This stereotype's persistence begs the question of whether such prejudices could hamper future development of China's fashion industries, as has already been the case in the recent development of certain higher-end Chinese brands (Juanjuan Wu, Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now [2009]).

The book offers a journey through a maze of various kinds of firms, some Italian, some Chinese, and, most importantly for its study, joint ventures with diverse ownership arrangements. Contracts between Chinese and Italian business partners, for example, may contain potential limitations for one partner while allowing the other partner to seek further investment. The book's ethnographic material supplies an excellent perspective on such limitations and asymmetries in contracts and negotiations. In China, some firms may be partly or entirely privatized, for example, which assigns them a responsibility over profits and losses that had been cushioned by the public in earlier times of state ownership. Likewise, small Chinese contracting or subcontracting firms that may be limited in their ability to grow by a lack of capital may strategize to nest themselves within larger, state-owned firms, in order to be able to produce more than the quotas allow and thereby grow despite their restrictions. At times, however, the reader may be interested in knowing more about the impact of external factors and, notably, the evolution of the textile quotas that have deeply impacted the industry during the last half century.

The authors also engage with questions about cross-fertilization and differentiation with regard to business clusters and about the dynamic between entrepreneurs and kinship. The history of the clusters in Italy's fashion and luxury industries has long fascinated economic historians, and the authors revisit it here, paying special attention to the region of Como. Their interviews reveal the challenges of family succession, the uncertain future of businesses when large groups of heirs are involved, and the anxieties related to the fact that local luxury production may be unable to compete with the larger luxury groups based in France or Switzerland. The rise of the Chinese silk business appears to both complement and compete with the Italian fashion industry. A Chinese parallel to the Italian clusters has surfaced in Wenzhou, near Shanghai. Unlike Shanghai, where state funding still plays a large role in business, Wenzhou presents itself as vigorously supportive of the start-up and small firm. The authors examine several cultural and geographical factors in this commitment, including Wenzhou's poor prospects for agriculture and its largely mountainous landscape. Since the 1990s, this so-called Wenzhou model has spread throughout China on the principle that it is better to own a business, however small. Initially received by the Chinese government as immoral or corrupt, the Wenzhou model has become more mainstream because opening one's own business allows young Chinese entrepreneurs to free themselves from the state's constraints. Some of these businesses may also act as subcontractors or intermediaries, including between Chinese and Western firms.

Cross-fertilization also factors into the ownership-related valuation of kinship. While family firms are prized in Italy, they were viewed as a form of corruption in China until recently. The authors show how private firms in China can develop as smaller entities nested within large state-owned firms or business groups, but they remain careful not to force categories upon businesses in China that remain in a state of transition, including in terms of ownership. They also show, through interview material, how family firms can exist in China without being directly acknowledged as such by management. Transnational influences have led Chinese entrepreneurs to give increased trust to the family firm, even when cultural and economic factors persist in hindering such developments. The evolution of such firms out of the context of the Chinese business past continues to be marked by the contradictions of postcommunist entrepreneurship.

Drawing upon methods of economic sociology, the authors discuss in detail recent developments in the history of family firms: that profit alone does not explain their persistence. Emotional and social benefits propel them as well, as had long been the case in France's haute couture business prior to its late twentieth-century financialization. Couture entrepreneurs often argued that one needed only to make enough money to survive, in the interests of sustaining their design workshops and fostering creative freedom. Their Italian counterparts also point to the ability to provide jobs to family members as another important benefit of family firms. The authors conclude that criteria involving both profitability and family advancement inform the persistence of family firms; future research might test these premises in creative industries other than fashion.

Based on rich oral histories, this dense and fascinating book proves the relevance of the ethnographic method to analyses of the changing dynamics of transnational capitalism in recent decades. It generates important perspectives on the future of Italian luxury firms and of China's industrial creativity and market for luxury fashions.