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Both quantitative and qualitative research has provided evidence of a fashion system with principled aesthetic transitions. Previous theories of coordination have been proposed at the level of collective behavior, but monopolistic competition at the industry level looms large. Designers and suppliers around the world have the difficult task of anticipating uncertain consumer demand. How are multiple layers of futurework coordinated through global value chains? Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic data from first-tier suppliers in India, I document the role of forecasting in buyer–supplier coordination. I describe the contents of forecasts and show how designers use organizational routines to balance competing requirements for conformity and differentiation. Most importantly, I argue that forecasting information is filtered through calculative spaces and the logic of uncertainty absorption. The consequences of transnational futurework resonate not only through finance and technological innovation, but through aesthetics and embodiment.

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Fashion model selection is a targeted case of aesthetic evaluation. For almost 100 years-beginning with data which Herbert Blumer collected in the 1930sscholars have tried to understand how models are selected. Most have taken a critical and structural approach. I rely instead on a microsociology which centers endogenous decision processes. It highlights the agency and constraints of situational perception and situational stratification, yielding a novel analysis of the casting encounter. Data comes from an ethnography of a fashion week in a semi-peripheral city. It includes backstage evaluations gathered during a stint as a casting agent. I find that agents surprisingly ignore faces, instead focusing on the embodied cues of height/heels, the walk, and body size. Sustained microsociological analysis opens a layered mode of perception highlighting the dynamics of time, attention, emotion, and situations. Keywords Evaluation • Microsociology • Aesthetics • Modeling • Beauty"Alas, beauty brooks no compromise; it is the merciless scale on which our life is weighed daily and found to be too light. " -Simmel ( [1897)

Creative, robust, and "moody" theories of action seek to modify a traditional voluntarism by attending to perception (broadly considered). Consolidating these theories as variants of an aesthetic sociology, I consider inspiration as one of the earliest stages in a larger theory of social action. Inspiration is narrower than creativity-it does not depend on audience recognition or valuation-but it offers a window into the prior dynamics of receptivity and anticipation. Close empirical study is possible. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with fashion designers, I analyze the spatial and material infrastructure of inspiration. I show how designers engage with space and materiality in their work, as well as how they utilize artistic license to tweak existing runway designs. I conclude with possibilities for future research and argue for the role of inspiration as a micro foundation of action.