The Perfect Fit shows us how globalization works through the many people and places involved in making women’s shoes.

We know a lot about how clothing and shoes are made cheaply, but very little about the process when they are made beautifully. In The Perfect Fit, Claudio E. Benzecry looks at the craft that goes into designing shoes for women in the US market, revealing that this creative process takes place on a global scale. Based on unprecedented behind-the-scenes access, The Perfect Fit offers an ethnographic window into the day-to-day life of designers, fit models, and technicians as they put together samples and prototypes, showing how expert work is a complement to and a necessary condition for factory exploitation.

Benzecry looks at the decisions and constraints behind how shoes are designed and developed, from initial inspiration to the mundane work of making sure a size seven stays constant. In doing so, he also fosters an original understanding of how globalization works from the ground up. Drawing on five years of research in New York, China, and Brazil, The Perfect Fit reveals how creative decisions are made, the kinds of expertise involved, and the almost impossible task of keeping the global supply chain humming.

""The Perfect Fit is a strong contribution to the literature on creative work, globalization, and the production of knowledge. And one, I think, that is well worth the read."
 " - International Sociology

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"The Perfect Fit will be an excellent piece of global ethnography of work and global production.  While the author classifies The Perfect Fit as materiality-centered cultural sociology, it goes beyond particular disciplinary boundaries, encompassing at least labor studies, economy sociology, cultural sociology, and industrial sociology."

"Hand in hand with a sociology of culture focused on the material, which dialogues with the social studies of science and technology, the sociology of knowledge, and a look at the global embodied in concrete processes and in areas of 'friction,' The Perfect Fit shows us a provocative look at two issues dear to capitalism: the logic of commodities and the problem of creativity."
  - Papeles de Trabajo

"Benzecry provides an illuminating and surprising account of what it takes for ordinary shoes to be designed and to take shape. In doing so, Benzecry makes important contributions to the sociology of globalization, the sociology of knowledge, and, even though he does not claim this contribution himself, to what one may call the sociology of the mundane." - American Journal of Sociology