Tecendo carreiras: trajetórias e legitimação profissional de designers de moda em Sergipe

Abstract

This dissertation examines the processes through which the profession of fashion designer in Brazil is constructed, legitimized, and recognized, with particular emphasis on the peripheral context of Sergipe, departing from the problem of the absence of formal regulation and the subordinate position of local agents in relation to hegemonic centers of consecration, notably the Southeast axis. The study aims to analyze how professional trajectories and institutional conditions are structured within this career, drawing upon the theoretical framework of the sociology of professions, especially Pierre Bourdieu, Eliot Freidson, and Howard Becker, in order to understand mechanisms of credentialing, professional socialization, and autonomy. Methodologically, the research combines a bibliographical review with a prosopographical approach applied to a set of 18 nationally recognized designers, identifying patterns of recruitment and sociodemographic profiles within the elite of the field; additionally, it conducts a qualitative analysis of the trajectories of eight professionals active in Sergipe through in depth interviews, in order to grasp the specificities of a peripheral context. The findings indicate that the national elite is predominantly male 77.8 percent and concentrated in the Southeast region 66.7 percent, with four main trajectory profiles coexisting: heirs to the textile trade, upwardly mobile autodidacts, graduates of private education, and members of the academic elite. In Sergipe, the study observes initial socialization within domestic and artisanal settings, a delayed pursuit of higher education as a symbolic resource for consecration, multiple professional engagements resulting from the fragility of the local market, and what is termed an external validation syndrome, whereby local prestige remains subordinated to recognition in major urban centers. It concludes that fashion design in Brazil exhibits an incomplete process of professionalization: in the absence of state jurisdiction, professional identity is sustained through intense biographical labor, as each agent individually negotiates technical authority and social prestige through networks, symbolic capital, and the management of visibility, thereby revealing informal mechanisms of selection and consecration that structure the field.