This examination of the social processes that inform cultural production asks how tastes are formed, transmitted, embedded, and reproduced across generations. These questions are explored through a study of William Morris, his working methods and products, and their impact on the decorative arts in Victorian Britain and beyond. Through the exercise of cultural leadership, Morris gave physical expression to the ideals and sentiments of Romanticism, and this in turn gave rise to a community of taste reaching across class boundaries and generations. Morrisian products and designs, through the agency of his disciples, became institutionally embedded, emblematic of refinement and good taste. A process model of taste formation is deployed to explore the economic and social dynamics at work in the Morris case and more generally.

The production of perfumery articles became an industry in the nineteenth century, and their broader social diffusion invites questions about the accuracy of perfume's identification at that time as a luxury product. The innovations generated or adopted by perfumers, whether they involved new extraction methods or the use of synthetic compounds, not only introduced new creative possibilities but also allowed wider margins on sales. The shift from artisanal fabrication to industrial manufacturing accompanied relatively steep increases in the price of perfumes. Nineteenth-century perfumers developed marketing strategies to build the value of their products and to position them as luxury goods.

The production of jewelry offers a lens through which to examine the nature of creativity in a capitalist economy. The fashioning of decorative goods for wider sections of society in the second half of the nineteenth century allowed manufacturers to expand the size of their businesses, but only by sustaining strong connections with consumers and keeping track of buyers' changing desires. The outcomes of decisions affecting their enterprises were determined by the degree to which producers understood what their customers wanted. Entrepreneurial activity was critical to the formation of strategies for coping with the problem of scarce or imperfect information and limited market power. These strategies induced a process of creative destruction, whereby old ways of making things changed, and technology, labor, skills, and capital were recombined.

During the Great Depression, counterfeiters of the newest styles posed a challenge to the high-fashion designers who dominated Parisian design. Meanwhile, New York, traditionally the destination of the first corporate buyers of Paris couture, became a potential contender for the role of fashion capital. Scrutiny of French and American laws reveals that strong national interests were at stake in the fashion business. In France, the law safeguarded copyrights of fashion design while, in the United States, legislators denied such protection to American fashion.

This study documents the emergence of the high-end fashion industry in India from the mid-1980s to 2005. Drawn from oral histories, magazine articles, and several databases, the study demonstrates that the Indian fashion industry's unique identity, based on heavily embellished traditional styles rather than innovative Western-style cuts and designs, was the result of the actions of early entrepreneurs.